Conflict Over the Lord's Supper

[GHansen]

The principal cause of the separation of the Lutherans from the Swiss, was Zwingle’s doctrine concerning the Lord’s Supper. While Luther maintained, that the body and blood of Christ are truly, though in an inexplicable manner, present in the Holy Supper, and are presented along with the bread and wine in that ordinance, Zwingle held, on the contrary, that the bread and wine are only signs and symbols of the absent body and blood of Christ; and he so taught in his public writings from the year 1524 onwards. The next year, John Œcolampadius, a theologian of Bâle, and one of the most learned men of that age, did the same thing. 

Both were opposed by Luther and his friends, and especially by the Suabians, with great firmness and resolution. Philip, the landgrave of Hesse, fearing much injury to the incipient cause of the Protestants, from these contests, endeavoured to put an end to them by a conference held at Marpurg, in the year 1529, between Zwingle, Luther, and some others. But he could obtain only a truce, not a peace. Luther and Zwingle came to agreement on many points: but the controversy respecting the Lord’s Supper was left for God and time to heal.

Von Mosheim, J. L. (1850). Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, vols. 1–4. (H. Soames, Ed., J. Murdock, Trans.) (Second Revised Edition, Vol. 3, pp. 354–355). London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman.