1

village seven fathoms deep in the earth. They had recourse to Samson to lift off a malediction which had already brought so many woes upon them, and the last and most dreadful of which yet awaited them. The lords of Bern used their mediation for the poor people. The good monk was compassionate. He granted, but of course not without a sum of money, a plenary indulgence, which removed the excommunication of the nuncio, and permitted the inhabitants to sleep in peace. Whether it is owing to Samson's indulgence we shall not say, but the fact is undeniable that the little town of Aarberg is above ground to this day. At Bern, so pleased was the monk with his success, that he signalised his departure with a marvellous feat of generosity. The bells were tolling his leavetaking, when Samson caused it to be proclaimed that he "delivered from the torments of purgatory and of hell all the souls of the Bernese who are dead, whatever may have been the manner or the place of their death."2 What sums it would have saved the good people of Bern, had he made that announcement on the first day of his visit! At Bern, Lupullus, formerly the schoolmaster, now canon, and whom we have already met with as one of Zwingle's teachers, was Samson's interpreter. "When the wolf and the fox prowl about together," said one of the canons to De Wattville, the provost, “your safest plan, my gracious lord, is to shut up your sheep and your geese." These remarks, as they broke no bones, and did not spoil his market, Samson bore with exemplary good

nature.

The

From Bern, Samson went on to Baden. Bishop of Constance, in whose diocese Baden was situated, had forbidden his clergy to admit the indulgence-monger into their pulpits, not because he disapproved his trade, but because Samson had not asked his permission before entering his diocese, or had his commission countersigned by him. The Curé of Baden, however, had not courage to shut the door of his pulpit in the face of the Pope's commissioner.

After a brisk trade of some days, the monk proposed to signalise his departure by an act of grace, similar to that with which he had closed his performances in Bern. After mass, he formed a procession, and putting himself at its head, he marched round the churchyard, himself and troop chanting the office for the dead. Suddenly he stopped, looked fixedly up into the sky, and after a minute's pause, he shouted out, "Ecce volant!"

Ruchat, tom. i., p. 97.

Ibid., pp. 97, 98. Gerdesius, tom. i., p. 124,

These were the souls es

"See how they fly!" caping through the open gates of purgatory and winging their way to Paradise. It struck a wag who was present that he would give a practical commentary on the flight of the souls to heaven. He climbed to the top of the steeple, taking with him a bag of feathers, which he proceeded to empty into the air. As the feathers were descending like snow-flakes on Samson and his company, the man exclaimed, "Ecce volant !"-"See how they fly!" The monk burst into a rage. To have the grace of holy Church so impiously travestied was past endurance. Such horrible profanation of the wholesome institution of indulgences, he declared, deserved nothing less than burning. But the citizens pacified him by saying that the man's wits were at times disordered. Be this as it may, it had turned the laugh against Samson, who departed from Baden somewhat crestfallen.

"God

Samson continued his journey, and gradually approached Zurich. At every step he dispensed his pardons, and yet his stock was no nearer being exhausted than when he crossed the Alps. On the way he was told that Zwingle was thundering against him from the pulpit of the cathedral. He went forward, notwithstanding. He would soon put the preacher to silence. As he came nearer, Zwingle waxed the bolder and the plainer. only can forgive," said the preacher, with a solemnity that awed his hearers; "none on earth can pardon sin. You may buy this man's papers, but be assured you are not absolved. He who sells indulgences is a sorcerer, like Simon Magus; a false prophet, like Balaam; an ambassador of the king of the bottomless pit, for to those dismal portals rather than to the gates of Paradise do indulgences lead."

Samson reached Zurich to find its gates closed, and the customary cup of wine-a hint that he was not expected to enter-waiting him. Feigning to be charged with a special message from the Pope to the Diet, he was admitted into the city. At his audience it was found that he had forgotten his message, for the sufficient reason that he had never received any.

He was ignominiously sent away without having sold so much as a single pardon in Zurich. Soon thereafter he re-crossed the Alps, dragging over their steeps a wagon-full of coin, the fruits of his robbery, and returned to his masters in Italy."

He was not long gone when another visitant appeared in Switzerland, sent of God to purify and

3 Ruchat, tom. i., p. 106. 4 Gerdesius, tom. i., p. 126 Pallavicino, tom. i., p. 80.

invigorate the movement-to scatter the good seed on the soil which Zwingle had ploughed and broken up. That visitant was the plague or "Great Death." It broke out in the August of that same year, 1519. As it spread from valley to valley, inflicting frightful ravages, men felt what a mockery were the pardons which thousands, a few months before, had flocked to purchase. It reached Zurich, and Zwingle, who had gone to the baths of Pfeffers to recruit his health, exhausted by the labours of the summer, hastened back to his flock. He was hourly by the bedsides of the sick or the dying.1 On every side of him fell friends, acquaintances, stricken down by the destroyer. He himself had hitherto escaped his shafts, but now he too was attacked. He lay at the point of death. Utterly prostrate, all hope of life was taken away. It was at this moment that he penned his little hymn, so simple, yet not a little dramatic, and breathing a resignation so entire, and a faith so firm

"Lo! at the door

I hear Death's knock!

Shield me, O Lord,
My strength and rock.

"The hand once nailed Upon the tree,

Jesus, upliftAnd shelter me, "Willest Thou, then,

Death conquer me In my noon-day?. So let it be!

"Oh! may I die,

Since I am Thine;
Thy home is made
For faith like mine."

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Thus he examined, at that awful moment, the foundations of his faith; he lifted his eyes to the cross; he knew whom he had believed; and being now more firmly persuaded than ever of the Gospel's truth, having put it to the last awful test, he returned from the gates of the grave to preach it with even more spirituality and fervour than before. Tidings of his death had been circulated in Basle, in Lucerne-in short, all the cities of the Confederation. Everywhere men heard with dismay that the great preacher of Switzerland had gone to his grave. Their joy was unaffectedly great when they learned that the news was not true, and that Zwingle still lived." Both the Reformer and the country had been chastened, solemnised, purified, and prepared for what awaited them.

WHEN Zwingle and the citizens of Zurich again assembled in their cathedral, it was a peculiarly solemn moment for both. They were just emerging from the shadow of the "Great Death." The preacher had risen from a sick-bed which had nearly passed into a death-bed, and the audience had come from waiting beside the couches on which they had seen their relations and friends breathe their last. The Reformed doctrine seemed to have acquired a new value. In the awful gloom through which they had just passed, when other lights had gone utterly out, the Gospel had shone only the

1 Bullinger, p. 87.

brighter. Zwingle spoke as he had never spoken before, and his audience listened as they had listened on no former occasion.

Zwingle now opened a deeper vein in his ministry. He touched less frequently upon the evils of foreign service. Not that he was less the patriot, but being now more the pastor, he perceived that a renovated Christianity was not only the most powerful renovator of his country's morals, but the surest palladium of its political interests. The fall and the recovery of man were his chief themes. "In Adam we are all dead," would he say-"sunk

in corruption and condemnation." This was a somewhat inauspicious commencement of a Gospel of "good news," for which, after the terrors incident to the scenes which the Zurichers had witnessed, so many of them thirsted. But Zwingle went on to proclaim a release from prison—an opening of the sepulchre. But dead men do not open their own tombs. Christ was their life. He had become so by his passion, which was eternal sacrifice, and everlastingly effectual to heal." To him must they come. "His sacrifice

66

an

satisfies Divine justice for ever in behalf of all who rely upon it with firm and unshaken faith." Are men then to live in sin? Are they to cease to cultivate holiness? No. Zwingle went on to show that, although this doctrine annihilates human merit, it does not annihilate evangelical virtue : that, although no man is saved for his holiness, no man will be saved without holiness: that as God bestows his salvation freely, so we give our obedience freely on the one side there is life by grace, and on the other works by love.

And then, going still deeper down, Zwingle would disclose that principle which is at once the strongest and the sweetest in all the Gospel system. What is that principle? Is it law? No. Law comes like a tyrant with a rod to coerce the unwilling, and to smite the guilty. Man is both unwilling and guilty. Law in his case, therefore, can but engender fear and that fear darkens his mind, enfeebles his will, and produces a cramped, oringing, slavish spirit, which vitiates all he does. It is the Medusa-head that turns him into stone.

The

What then is the principle? It is love. But how comes love to spring up in the heart of a guilty and condemned man? It comes in this wise. Gospel turns man's eye upon the Saviour. He sees Him enduring His passion in his stead, bearing the bitter tree, to bestow upon him a free forgiveness, and life everlasting. That look enkindles love. That love penetrates his whole being, quickening, purifying, and elevating all his powers, filling the understanding with light, the will with obedience, the conscience with peace, the heart with joy, and making the life to abound in holy deeds, fruitful alike to God and man. Such was the Gospel that was now preached in the Cathedral of Zurich.

The Zurichers did not need any argument to convince them that this doctrine was true. They read its truth in its own light. Its glory was not of earth, but of the skies, where was the place of its birth. An unspeakable joy filled their hearts when they saw the black night of monkery departing,

1 Zwing. Opp., i. 206; apud D'Aubigné, ii. 351.

with its cowls, its beads, its scourges, its purgatorial fires, which had given much uneasiness to the flesh, but brought no relief to the conscience; and the sweet light of the Gospel opening so full of refreshing to their souls.

The cathedral, although a spacious building, could not contain the crowds that flocked to it. Zwingle laboured with all his might to consolidate the movement. He admirably combined prudence with his zeal. He practised the outward forms of the Church in the pale of which he still remained. He said mass: he abstained from flesh on fast-days: but all the while he laboured indefatigably to diffuse a knowledge of Divine truth, knowing that as the new growth developed, the old, with its rotten timber, and seared and shrivelled leaves, would be cast off. As soon as men should come to see that a free pardon was offered to them in the Bible, they would no longer scourge themselves to merit one, or climb the mountain of Einsiedeln with money in their hand to buy one. In short, Zwingle's first object, which he ever kept clearly in view, was not the overthrow of the PAPACY, but the restoration of CHRISTIANITY.

He commenced a week-day lecture for the peasants who came to market on Friday. Beautifully consecutive and logical was his Sunday course of instruction. Having opened to his flock the Gospel in his expositions of St. Matthew, he passed on to the consideration of the Acts of the Apostles, that he might show them how Christianity was diffused. He next expounded the Epistles, that he might have an opportunity of inculcating the Christian graces, and showing that the Gospel is not only a "doctrine," but also a "life." He then took up the Epistles of St. Peter, that he might reconcile the two apostles, and show the harmony that reigns in the New Testament on the two great subjects of "Faith" and "Works ;" and last of all he expounded the Epistle to the Hebrews, showing the harmony that subsists between the two Dispensations, that both have one substance, and that one substance is the Gospel-Salvation of Graceand that the difference lay only in the mode of revelation, which was by type and symbol in the one case, by plain literal statements in the other. "Here they were to learn," says Zwingle, "that Christ is our alone true High Priest. That was the seed I sowed; Matthew, Luke, Paul, Peter have watered it, but God caused it to thrive." And in a letter to Myconius, of December 31st, 1519, he reports that "at Zurich upwards of 2,000 souls had already been so strengthened and nourished by the milk of the truth, that they could

2 Christoffel, pp. 40, 42.

now bear stronger food, and anxiously longed for it." Thus, step by step, did Zwingle lead his hearers onward from the first principles to the higher mysteries of Divine revelation.

A movement like this could not be confined within the walls of Zurich, any more than day can break and valley and mountain-top not catch the radiance. The seeds of this renovation were being cast by Zwingle into the air; the winds were wafting them all over Switzerland, and at many points labourers were preparing a soil in which they might take root and grow. It was in favour of the move

ment here that the chief actors were not, as elsewhere, kings, ministers, and princes of the Church, but the people. Let us look around and note the beginnings of this movement, by which so many of the Helvetic cantons were, at no distant day, to be emancipated from the tyranny of the Papal supremacy, and the superstitions of the Papal faith.

We begin on the northern frontier. There was at that time at Basle a brilliant cluster of men. Among the first, and by much the most illustrious of them all, was Erasmus, whose edition of the New Testament (1516) may be said to have opened a way for the Reformation. The labours of the celebrated printer Frobenius were scarcely less powerful. He printed at Basle the writings of Luther, and in a short time spread them in Italy, France, Spain, and England. Among the second class, the more distinguished were Capito and Hedio. They were warm friends and admirers of Zwingle, and they adopted in Basle the same measures for the propagation of the Reformed faith which the latter was prosecuting with so much success at Zurich. Capito began to expound daily to the citizens the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and with results thus described in a letter of Hedio's to Zwingle in 1520: "This most efficacious doctrine of Christ penetrates and warms the heart." The audiences increased. The doctors and monks conspired against the preacher, and raised tumults. The Cardinal-Archbishop of Mainz, desiring to possess so great a scholar, invited Capito to Mainz. On his departure, however, the work did not cease. Hedio took it up, and beginning where Capito had stopped, went on to expound the Gospel with a courageous eloquence, to which the citizens listened, although the monks ceased not to warn them against believing those who told them that the sum of all Christian doctrine was to be found in the Gospel. Scotus, said they, was a greater doctor than St. Paul. So broke the dawn The number of its

of the Reformation in Basle.

Puchat, tom. i., p. 108.

3

Gerdesius, tom. ii., p. 229.

* Scultet, p. 67. 4 Gerdesius, tom. ii., p. 229.

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disciples in this seat of learning rapidly increased. Still it had a long and sore fight before obtaining the mastery. The aristocracy were powerful: the clergy were not less so the University threw its might into the same scale. Here was a triple rampart, which it cost the truth much effort to scale. Hedio, who succeeded Capito, was himself succeeded by Ecolampadius, the greatest of the three. Ecolampadius laboured with zeal and waited in hope for six years. At last, in 1528, Basle, the last of all the Helvetic cantons, decreed its acceptance of the Reformed faith."

At Lucerne, Myconius endeavoured to sow the good seed of the Gospel; but the soil was unkindly, and the seed that sprang up soon withered. It was choked by the love of arms and the power of superstition. Oswald Geishauser-for such was his name till Erasmus hellenised it into Myconius-was one of the sweetest spirits and most accomplished minds of that age. He was born at Lucerne (1488), and educated at Basle, where he became Rector of St. Peter's School. In 1516 he left Basle, and became Rector of the Cathedral School at Zurich. He was the first of those who sought to dispel the ignorance of his native Switzerland by labouring, in his vocation as schoolmaster, to introduce at once the knowledge of ancient letters and the love of Holy Scripture. He had previously contracted friendship with Zwingle, and it was mainly through his efforts and counsel that the Preacher of Einsiedeln was elected to fill the vacant office at Zurich. The two friends worked lovingly together, but at length it was resolved that Myconius should carry the light to his native city of Lucerne. The parting was sad, but Myconius obeyed and set out.

He hoped that his office as head-master in the collegiate school of this city would afford him opportunities of introducing a opportunities of introducing a higher knowledge than that of Pagan literature among the citizens around the Waldstatter Lake. He began his work very quietly. The writings of Luther had preceded him, but the citizens of Lucerne, the strenuous advocates at once of a foreign service and a foreign faith, abandoned these books as if they had proceeded from the pen of a demon. The expositions of Myconius in the school awakened instant suspicion. "We must burn Luther and the schoolmaster," said the citizens to one another. Myconius went on, notwithstanding, not once mentioning Luther's name, but quietly conveying to the youth around him a knowledge of the

Gerdesius, tom. ii., sec. 106, 120, 121.

Letter to Zwingle, 1520 Gerdesins, tom. ii., p. 231.