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

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This liberty goes much further than Zwingli’s plan, who would have
excluded heretical sects. There are now, on the one hand, Protestant
churches at Luzern, Baar, Brunnen, in the very heart of the Five Cantons
(besides the numerous Anglican Episcopal, Scotch Presbyterian, and other
services in all the Swiss summer resorts); and on the other hand, Roman
Catholic churches in Zürich, Bern, Basel, Geneva, where the mass was
formerly rigidly prohibited.
As regards the foreign military service which had a tendency to
denationalize the Swiss, Zwingli’s theory has completely triumphed. The
only relic of that service is the hundred Swiss guards, who, with their
picturesque mediaeval uniform, guard the pope and the Vatican. They are
mostly natives of the Five Forest Cantons.
Thus history explains and rectifies itself, and fulfils its promises.
NOTES.
There is a striking correspondence between the constitution of the old
Swiss Diet and the constitution of the old American Confederacy, as also
between the modern Swiss constitution and that of the United States. The
Swiss Diet seems to have furnished an example to the American
Confederacy, and the Congress of the United States was a model to the
Swiss Diet in 1848. The legislative power of Switzerland is vested in the
Assembly of the Confederacy (Bundesversammlung) or Congress, which
consists of the National Council (Nationalrath) or House of
Representatives, elected by the people, one out of twenty thousand,—and
the Council of Cantons (Ständerath) or Senate, composed of forty-four
delegates of the twenty-two Cantons (two from each) and corresponding
to the old Diet. The executive power is exercised by the Council of the
Confederacy (Bundesrath), which consists of seven members, and is
elected every three years by the two branches of the legislature, one of
them acting as President (Bundespräsident) for the term of one year (while
the President of the United States is chosen by the people for four years,
and selects his own cabinet. Hence the head of the Swiss Confederacy has
very little power for good or evil, and is scarcely known). To the Supreme
Court of the United States corresponds the Bundesgericht, which consists
of eleven judges elected by the legislature for three years, and decides
controversies between the Cantons. Comp. Bluntschli’s Geschichte des
Schweizerischen Bundesrechts, 1875; Rüttimann, Das nordamerikanisehe