The Two Republics, or Rome and the United States of America

THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND

Zwingle, who gave the cast to the Reformation in Switzerland, sanctioned, if he did not really create there, the union of Church and State. His view was that the State is Christian. “The Reformer deserting the paths of the apostles, allowed himself to be led astray by the perverse example of popery.” He himself “resolved to be at one and the same time the man of the State and of the Church, ... at once the head of the State and general of the army—this double, this triple, part of the Reformer was the ruin of the Reformation and of himself.” For when war came on in Switzerland, Zwingle girded on his sword, and went with the troops to battle. “Zwingle played two parts at once—he was a reformer and a magistrate. But these are two characters that ought no more to be united than those of a minister and of a soldier. We will not altogether blame the soldiers and the magistrates: in forming leagues and drawing the sword, even for the sake of religion, they act according to their point of view, although it is not the same as ours; but we must decidedly blame the Christian minister who becomes a diplomatist or a general.” TTR 577.1

He who took the sword, perished by the sword. In the first battle that was fought—October 11, A. D. 1531—twenty-five of the Swiss reform preachers were slain, the chief of whom was Zwingle, who fell stricken with many blows. “If the German Reformer had been able to approach Zwingle at this solemn moment and pronounce those oft-repeated words, ‘Christians fight not with sword and arquebuse, but with sufferings and with the cross,’ Zwingle would have stretched out his dying hand and said, ‘Amen.’”—D’Aubigné. ⁹ TTR 578.1