In Switzerland from 1516 to 1525 - James Aitken Wylie

or ecclesiastical community, should be free to
accept or reject their decision, according as they
might deem it to be founded on the Bible.
Practically, and in point of fact, this affair was
a conference or disputation between the two great
religious parties in presence of the council–not that
the council could add to the truth of that which
drew its authority from the Bible exclusively. It
judged of the truth or falsehood of the matter
submitted to it, in order that it might determine the
course it became the council to pursue in the
exercise of its own functions as the rulers of the
canton. It must hear and judge not for spiritual but
for legal effects. If the Gospel which Zwingli and
his fellow-laborers are publishing be true, the
council will give the protection of law to the
preaching of it.
That this was the light in which Zwingli
understood the matter is plain, we think, from his
own words. "The matter," says he, "stands thus.
We, the preachers of the Word of God in Zurich,
on the one hand, give the Council of Two Hundred
162