Elkanah Armitage

“ When a new embassy threatened Zürich with exclusion from the union she began to make preparations for war.
It was at this moment that the controversy between Luther and Zwingli took on a deeper significance. In March 1525 the latter brought out his long Commentary on the True and False Religion, in which he goes over all the topics of practical theology. Like others of the Reformers he had been led independently to preach justification by faith and to declare that Jesus Christ was the one and only Mediator between sinful man and God ”

“ At the age of twenty-two Zwingli was ordained by the bishop of Constance (1506) , preached his first sermon at Rapperswyl, and said his first mass among his own people at Wildhaus. In the same year he was elected parish priest of Glarus, in spite of the pope's nomination of Heinrich Goldli, an influential pluralist of Zürich, whom Zwingli found it necessary to buy off at an expense of more than a hundred gulden. The Holy See, much dependent at that time on its Swiss mercenaries in the pursuit of its secular ends, expressed no resentment on this occasion. ”

“ The Swiss, who furnished them with troops, were to be treated with consideration; and the pope sought to silence the reformer by offers of promotion, which he refused. He held himself, as did the Swiss in general, very free of papal control. They had long been used, in their orderly democratic life, to manage their own ecclesiastical affairs. ”

“ As he was keen at his books and fond of music he was destined for the Church, and when eight years old was sent to school at Wesen, where he lived with his uncle, the dean. Two years later he was sent to a school in Basel, where he remained three years, passing thence to the high school at Bern, where his master, Heinrich Wölflin, inspired him with an enthusiasm for the classics. ”