Today With Zwingli: Fearlessness and Independence

On 24 July, 1520 Zwingli wrote a friend

“Within a few days I will go to the papal Legate [Pucci], and if he shall open a conversation on the subject as he did before, I will urge him to warn the Pope not to issue an excommunication [against Luther], which I think would be greatly against him [the Pope]. For if it be issued I believe the Germans will equally despise the Pope and the excommunication.

But do you be of good cheer, for our day will not lack those who will teach Christ faithfully, and who will give up their lives for Him willingly, even though among men their names shall not be in good repute after this life.… So far as I am concerned I look for all evil from all of them: I mean both ecclesiastics and laymen. I beseech Christ for this one thing only, that He will enable me to endure all things courageously, and that He break me as a potter’s vessel or make me strong, as it pleases Him.

If I be excommunicated I shall think of the learned and holy Hilary, who was exiled from France to Africa, and of Lucius, who though driven from his seat at Rome returned again with great honour. Not that I compare myself with them: for as they were better than I so they suffered what was a greater ignominy. And yet if it were good to glory I would rejoice to suffer insult for the name of Christ. But let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

Lately I have read scarcely anything of Luther’s; but what I have seen of his hitherto does not seem to me to stray from gospel teaching. You know—if you remember—that what I have always spoken of in terms of the highest commendation in him is that he supports his position with authoritative witnesses.”

The editor of the letter goes on to remark correctly

Zwingli is here, as always, the critic, not the follower, of Luther, and as he came to the same positions simultaneously or perhaps previously, at all events independently, it was wrong ever to dub him with the name of Luther, and he resented it. See his remarks in his exposition of the Articles of 1523.*

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*Huldreich Zwingli: The Reformer of German Switzerland (1484–1531).