Zwingli was clear-headed, self-possessed, jejune, and sober (even in his radical departures
from Rome), and farther removed from fanaticism than Luther himself. He was a pupil of the
classical and humanistic school of Erasmus; he had never been so deeply rooted in the mediaeval
faith, and it cost him much less trouble than Luther to break off from the old church; he was a man
of reflection rather than of intuition, and had no mystic vein, but we may say a rationalistic bent.
Nevertheless, he was as loyal to Christ, and believed in the Word of God and the supernatural as
firmly, as Luther; and the Reformed churches to this day are as pure, faithful, devoted, and active
in Christian works as any, and less affected by rationalism than the Lutheran, in part for the very
reason that they allow reason its legitimate influence in dogmatic questions. If Zwingli believed in
the salvation of the pious heathen and unbaptized infants, it was not because he doubted the absolute
necessity of the saving grace of Christ, which he very strongly asserted, but simply because he
extended this grace beyond the boundaries of the visible church, and the ordinary means of grace;
and on this point, as on others, he anticipated modern ideas. He was inferior to Luther in genius,
and depth of mind and heart, but his superior in tolerance, liberality, and courtesy; and in these
qualities also he was in advance of his age, and has the sympathies of the best modern culture.
Making every allowance for Luther’s profound religious conviction, and for the
misunderstanding of his opponent, nothing can justify the spirit and style of Luther’s polemics,
especially his last book against the sacramentarians. He drew his inspiration for it from the
imprecatory Psalms, not from the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke the truth in hatred and wrath,
not in love.
This betrays an organic defect in his reformation; namely, the over-estimate of dogmatics
over ethics, and a want of discipline and self-government. In the same year in which he wrote his
fiercest book against the Sacramentarians, he seriously contemplated leaving Wittenberg as a
veritable Sodom: so bad was the state of morals, according to his own testimony, in the very centre
of his influence.^909 It required a second reformation, and such men as Arnd, Andreae, Spener. and
Franke, to supplement the one-sided Lutheran orthodoxy by practical piety. Calvin, on the other
hand, left at his death the church of Geneva in such a flourishing condition that John Knox
pronounced it the best school of Christ since the days of the Apostles, and that sixty years later
John Valentin Andreae, one of the noblest and purest Lutheran divines of the seventeenth century,
from personal observation held it up to the Lutheran Church as a model for imitation.
Luther’s polemics had a bad effect on the Lutheran Church. He set in motion that theological
fury which raged for several generations after his death, and persecuted some of the best men in
it, from Melanchthon down to Spener.
His blind followers, in their controversies among themselves and with the Reformed, imitated
his faults, without his genius and originality; and in their zeal for what they regarded the pure
doctrine, they forgot the common duties of courtesy and kindness which we owe even to an enemy.^910
(^909) In July, 1545 (De Wette, V. 732 sq.), he wrote to his wife from Leipzig that he did not wish to return, and that she should sell house
and home, and move "from this Sodoma" to Zulsdorf. He would rather beg his bread than torture his last days by the sight of the disorderly
condition of Wittenberg.
(^910) These champions of Lutheran orthodoxy were not simply Lutherisch, but verluthert, durchluthert, and überluthert. They fulfilled
the prediction of the Reformer: "Adorabunt stercora mea." Their mottoes were,—
"Gottes Wort und Luther’s Lehr
Vergehet nun und nimmermehr;"
and
"Gottes Wort und Luther’s Schrift