Huldrych Zwingli on Baptism
Infants included, as a covenant sign
By baptism, therefore, the Church publicly receives one who has previously been received through grace. Hence baptism does not convey grace but the Church certifies that grace has been given to him to whom it is administered.
THE POSITION
Infants are baptized because they belong to the covenant people, exactly as Hebrew infants were circumcised — and baptism does nothing to them. Zwingli fought the Zurich Anabaptists on the first half and the whole sacramental tradition on the second: the water is a public testimony that grace has already been given, not a means of giving it. He is blunt that the sacraments are so far from conferring grace that they do not even convey it, and he notes that Isaac was circumcised without professing or believing, the promise acting in his stead.
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
7 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Reformer of Zurich and the first Reformed theologian to leave a confession — the Sixty-Seven Articles of 1523 predate Augsburg by seven years. He pushed further than Luther on the Supper, which split the early Reformation at Marburg in 1529, further than anyone on the reach of election, and further than any other Reformer on who might finally be saved. This entry rests on the Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), the Declaration Regarding Original Sin (1526), the Fidei Ratio sent to Charles V (1530) and the Exposition of the Christian Faith written weeks before he died in battle — the last of these read only in its chapter on eternal life.
Cite this page
"Huldrych Zwingli on Baptism", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/zwingli/baptism (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/zwingli/baptism).