Schwerzenbach in Greifensee,
Bullinger informs us.
CHAPTER SEVENTH.
FIRST CAMPAIGN. ZWINGLI AND LUTHER.
Two primal forces live and move in man, the one more in this
individual, the other more in that one; they both spring from above:
Feeling and Understanding. Original, childlike Feeling _is_ the inner
law; but it does not know itself. The awakening Understanding _seeks_
the law, but finds it not; for around them and between them settle the
mist of earth, the smoke and vapors of passion. Power is needed to work
their way up out of the mist; a celestial sun to scatter it. That sun
is Love. In Love, as well as in Power, God has revealed himself. Only
in the loving act, in revelation, are Feeling and Understanding able to
find each other, to understand each other, and then also first to
understand themselves. Now, and in this way alone, does growth in true
knowledge begin. With it disunion, discord is no longer possible; all
discord, even that which is internal, springs from want of knowledge.
The error is most lamentable, when Feeling fears the Understanding, and
the Understanding hates Feeling. This it is, which can lead to war for
religion. No war for religion is permitted to end with the overthrow of
one of these. God will not have it so; for he has created Feeling and
Understanding as immortal, mutually completing sisters. Did Zwingli not
know this? Was he perchance a man of a one-sided understanding,
imprisoned in mist, who sought knowledge in his own strength, but for
this very reason was never able to discover the truth? Did he desire to
subject Feeling to the Understanding, to subdue faith to the yoke of
the letter--of the letter, which men invented to express _their_
thoughts, whilst the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, does not
reveal himself in _words made of letters_, but in _the Word_ of Love,
the loving act? They tried it, who came after him, who were not able to
comprehend him; but they have been shamefully wrecked with their ever
swelling formulas of confession. The church of Zurich under Zwingli,
and then under the _antistes_ Klingler (1688-1713)--what a sad
contrast! Yet here is not the place to speak of it.
Faith, that feeling of the Divine will, of the Divine revelation,
transformed into knowledge, had struck its roots as deep into the
nature of Zwingli as into that of Luther. Who can doubt it, when he
reads thus in his Explanation of t
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