In Switzerland from 1516 to 1525 - James Aitken Wylie

ody of men, had a peculiar and exclusive power
of perceiving the sense of Scripture, and of
authoritatively declaring it. The Spirit who inspired
it would, he asserted, reveal it to every earnest and
prayerful reader of it.
This was the starting-point of Ulric Zwingli.
"The Scriptures," said he, "come from God, not
from man, and even that God who enlightens will
give thee to understand that the speech comes from
God. The Word of God. .. cannot fail; it is bright, it
teaches itself, it discloses itself, it illumines the
soul with all salvation and grace, comforts it in
God, humbles it, so that it loses and even forfeits
itself, and embraces God in itself."
These effects of the Bible, Zwingli had himself
experienced in his own soul. He had been an
enthusiastic student of the wisdom of the ancients:
he had pored over the pages of the scholastic
divines; but not till he came to the Holy Scriptures,
did he find a knowledge that could solve his doubts
and stay his heart. "When seven or eight years
ago," we find him writing in 1522, "I began to give
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