He had no vivid perceptions of dogma recording the struggles of the soul. But he learnt from his varied parochial experience to realise keenly the relations between a pastor and his people. He had no deep ^ philosophic basis for his opinions, and he was no framer of theories; he needed the touch of actual life to bring his powers to work, and he needed a field that suited him before he could form a definite policy. So far he was a keen Swiss patriot, with that love of the past that had formed the legend of Tell, a humanist, and a Reformer of the type of Erasmus, if indeed he was a Reformer at all.
If he was correct in his own view of his mental history, he took up an anti-papal stand from the first, and not, as Luther did, pressed by the course of argument. "The Papacy must fall, 1' he said to Capito in 1517. But the humanists had inherited something of scholastic freedom in discussion, and to call the papal authority in question was no new thing in 1517. There was little significance in this expression of opinion from one who held a papal pension, and had done his best to secure help for the Papacy in what many of its friends condemned-its Italian wars and temporal policy.
After refusing one post at Winterthur, he received the offer of another, that of people's priest at the Great Minster of Zurich. His reputation as a preacher was in his favour; the new Provost of the Chapter-Felix Frei-had humanistic sympathies, and the political views, which had made him enemies at Glarus, were not against him here, for similar views had friends at Zurich; foreign pensions had been forbidden by the Pensionbrief of 1503, and met with warm opposition in the Chapter; the French alliance also was of less importance here. His appointment was preceded by much negotiation; there were rivals, and a story was brought up to his discredit which he could neither in the main deny, nor yet adequately defend; indeed, the tone of his defence showed a lack of moral sense. Finally the influence of his friends, especially of Myconius (Oswald Geisshiissler), schoolmaster at the Minster school, gained him the election (December 11, 1518), 17 out of a chapter of 24 voting for him. The office of people's priest or vicar at the Minster, thus gained, he kept until 1522; later he received a prebend after he had resigned his papal pension.
Zwingli had thus come to the proper field of his religious and political work. His development had so far been independent, not influenced even by Luther; and yet the movement begun by Zwingli owes much of its importance to that initiated by the German Reformer. Their likeness was the product of the time: their differences were not only doctrinal. Luther was no humanist, nor did his work lie in a Swiss city or in the Swiss Confederation. The special type of Protestantism presented to the world by Zwingli was due to his field of work being a city commonwealth with a peculiar history, political and ecclesiastical. But the ideas with which he started were the results of his humanism and of his previous work.
