SOURCE: "Zwingli's Theology, Philosophy, and Ethics," in Huldreich Zwingli: The Reformer of German Switzerland, 1484–1531, edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson, revised edition, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1903, pp. 365–401.

In this essay, Foster gives an overview and explanation of the main precepts of Zwingli's theology.

The Protestant Reformation rendered two separate and great services in the realm of thought to its age and to the world. One of these was in the protest which it delivered against the Roman doctrinal system; and the other was in its positive contribution to the enrichment and development of Christian theology. The Roman idea of human merit and its relation to salvation had led to a conception of grace, of the operation of the sacraments, of the atonement and the divine forgiveness, to a system of morals, and to methods of discipline, which the adherents of the Protestant faith declared must be swept away, with...