Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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with an exhortation to the king to give the gospel free course in his
kingdom. In the section on Eternal Life he expresses more strongly than
ever his confident hope of meeting in heaven not only the saints of the Old
and the New Dispensation from Adam down to the Apostles, but also the
good and true and noble men of all nations and generations. f278
This liberal extension of Christ’s kingdom and Christ’s salvation beyond
the limits of the visible Church, although directly opposed to the traditional
belief of the necessity of water baptism for salvation, was not altogether
new. Justin Martyr, Origen, and other Greek fathers saw in the scattered
truths of the heathen poets and philosophers the traces of the pre-Christian
revelation of the Logos, and in the philosophy of the Greeks a
schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. The humanists of the school of
Erasmus recognized a secondary inspiration in the classical writings, and
felt tempted to pray: “Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.” Zwingli was a
humanist, but he had no sympathy with Pelagianism. On the contrary, as
we have shown previously, he traced salvation to God’s sovereign grace,
which is independent of ordinary means, and he first made a clear
distinction between the visible and the invisible Church. He did not intend,
as he has been often misunderstood, to assert the possibility of salvation
without Christ. “Let no one think,” he wrote to Urbanus Rhegius (a
preacher at Augsburg), “that I lower Christ; for whoever comes to God
comes to him through Christ .... The word, ‘He who believeth not will be
condemned,’ applies only to those who can hear the gospel, but not to
children and heathen .... I openly confess that all infants are saved by
Christ, since grace extends as far as sin. Whoever is born is saved by Christ
from the curse of original sin. If he comes to the knowledge of the law and
does the works of the law (Rom. 2:14, 26), he gives evidence of his
election. As Christians we have great advantages by the knowledge of the
gospel.” He refers to the case of Cornelius, who was pious before his
baptism; and to the teaching of Paul, who made the circumcision of the
heart, and not the circumcision of the flesh, the criterion of the true
Israelite (Rom. 2:28, 29). f279
The Confession to Francis I. was the last work of Zwingli. It was written
three months before his death, and published five years later (1536) by
Bullinger, who calls it his “swan song.” The manuscript is preserved in the
National Library of Paris, but it is doubtful whether the king of France ever
saw it. Calvin dedicated to him his Institutes, with a most eloquent preface,
but with no better success. Charles V. and Francis I. were as deaf to such