Zwingli, Vicar. (11)

I will do that and prove it before the universities, where learned judges sit. And choose a place, be it Paris, Cologne or Freiburg, whichever you please; then I shall overthrow the Articles presented by you and prove them to be wrong.

I am ready, wherever you wish, as also to-day I offered to give answer at Constance, if a safe conduct (as to you here) is promised to me and respected. But no judge I want, except the Scriptures, as they have been said and spoken by the Spirit of God; no human being, whichsoever it be; and before you overthrow one Article the earth must be overthrown, for they are the Word of God.

This is a queer affair. When, e. g., two are quarreling about an acre or about a meadow, they are sent before a judge. Him they also accept, and you refuse to allow these matters to come before a judge. How would this be if I should propose that you take my lords of Zurich as judges? Would you not accept these and allow them to judge?

In worldly affairs and in quarrels I know well that one should go before the judges with the disputes, and I also would choose and have as judges my lords of Zurich, since they possess justice. But in these matters, which pertain to divine wisdom and truth, I will accept no one as judge and witness except the Scriptures, the Spirit of God speaking from the Scriptures.

How would it be if you chose a judge and I also one, both impartial, be it here or somewhere else, would you not be satisfied what these two recognized and pronounced as true sentence?

Hereupon Sir Fritz von Anwyl, major-domo of the bishop of Constance, spoke:

Must we then all believe as those two, and not hold otherwise?

Hereupon there was a laugh, so that the vicar became silent and answered nothing. But when it had again become quiet the vicar spoke thus:

Christ in the Gospel says, Matt. xxviii. 20, He will remain with us even unto the end of the world. In another place [Matt.], xxvi. 11, he says: “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” Now if there were no one who decided concerning these sayings, who could know how one should grasp these two sayings thus opposed to each other? One must then have a judge.