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

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Seven Cantons—Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg, and
Soluthurn (Soleur)—remained firm to the faith of their ancestors. Four
Cantons, including the two strongest—Zürich, Bern, Basel, and
Schaffhausen—adopted the Reformed faith. Five Cantons—Glarus, St.
Gall, Appenzell, Thurgau, and Aargau—are nearly equally divided between
the two Confessions. Of the twenty-three subject towns and districts, only
Morat and Granson became wholly Protestant, sixteen retained their
former religion, and five were divided. In the Grisons nearly two-thirds of
the population adopted the Zwinglian Reformation; but the Protestant
gains in the Valtellina and Chiavenna were lost in the seventeenth century.
Ticino and Wallis are Roman Catholic. In the French Cantons—Geneva,
Canton de Vaud, and Neuchatel—the Reformation achieved a complete
victory, chiefly through the labors of Calvin.
Since the middle of the sixteenth century the numerical relation of the two
Churches has undergone no material change. Protestantism has still a
majority of about half a million in a population of less than three millions.
The Roman Catholic Church has considerably increased by immigration
from Savoy and France, but has suffered some loss by the Old Catholic
secession in 1870 under the lead of Bishop Herzog. The Methodists and
Baptists are making progress chiefly in those parts where infidelity and
indifferentism reign.
Each Canton still retains its connection with one or the other of the two
Churches, and has its own church establishment; but the bond of union has
been gradually relaxed, and religious liberty extended to dissenting
communions, as Methodists, Baptists, Irvingites, and Old Catholics. The
former exclusiveness is abolished, and the principle of parity or equality
before the law is acknowledged in all the Cantons.
An impartial comparison between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed
Cantons reveals the same difference as exists between Southern and
Northern Ireland, Eastern and Western Canada, and other parts of the
world where the two Churches meet in close proximity. The Roman
Catholic Cantons have preserved more historical faith and superstition,
churchly habits and customs; the Protestant Cantons surpass them in
general education and intelligence, wealth and temporal prosperity; while in
point of morality both are nearly equal.