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

739
Prussia not to tolerate it in his dominion. In his furious polemic tract,
Short Confession of the Holy Sacrament, written in 1645, a year before
his death (Werke, Erlangen ed., vol. XXXII. 399-401, 410), Luther
says that “Zwingel” (he always misspells his name) and Oecolampadius
“perished in their sins”; that Zwingli died “in great and many sins and
blasphemy” ( in grossen und vielen Sünden und Gotteslästerung),
having expressed a hope for the salvation of such “gottlose Heiden” as
Socrates, Aristides, and the “greuliche Numa” that he became a
heathen; and that he perished by the sword because he took up the
sword. He adds that he, Martin Luther, “would rather a hundred times
be torn to pieces and burned than make common cause with Stenkefeld
[Stinkfeld for Schwenkfeld], Zwingel, Carlstadt, and Oeclampadius!” O
sancta simplicitas! How different is the conduct and judgment of
Zwingli, who, at Marburg, with tears in his eyes, offered the hand of
brotherhood to his great antagonist, and who said of him in the very
heat of the eucharistic controversy: “Luther is so excellent a warrior of
God, and searches the Scriptures with such great earnestness as no one
on earth for these thousand years has done; and no one has ever
equalled him in manly, unshaken spirit with which he has attacked the
pope of Rome. He was the true David whom the Lord himself
appointed to slay Goliath. He hurled the stones taken from the heavenly
brook so skilfully that the giant fell prostrate on the ground. Saul has
slain thousands, but David tens of thousands. He was the Hercules who
rushed always to the post of danger in battle ... Therefore we should
justly thank God for having raised such an instrument for his honor;
and this we do with pleasure.”
ft294 Christoffel, I. 409. Comp. also the beautiful preface of Zwingli to the
history of the passion, in which he shows his readiness to die for Christ,
quoted by Mörikofer, II. 415.
ft295 The Swiss Sonderbunds-Krieg was an anticipation, on a small scale, of
the Civil War in the United States, though the causes were different. In
both cases the confederates rebelled against the federal government,
and sought the aid of their hereditary enemy; the Swiss of the Catholic
Forest Cantons that of Austria, the Americans of the slaveholding
Southern States that of England. For a clear sketch of the
Sonderbunds-Krieg, see Vuillemin, Geschichte der Schweizerischen
Eidgenossenschaft (1882), pp. 517-537.
ft296 It was concluded Nov. 16, but dated Nov. 20.