Schaff on Zwingli and the aim of the Reformation

Zwingli made it his chief object 'to preach Christ from the fountain,' and 'to insert the pure Christ in to the hearts.'  He would preach nothing but what he could prove from the Scriptures, as the only rule of Christian faith and practice.  

This is a reformatory idea; for the aim of the Reformation was to reopen the fountain of the New Testament to the whole people, and to renew the life of the Church by the power of the primitive gospel.  By his method of preaching on entire books he could give his congregation a more complete idea of the life of Christ and the way of salvation than by confining himself to detached sections.  

He did not at first attack the Roman Church, but only the sins of the human heart; he refuted errors by the statement of truth.  

- Philip Schaff, The History of the Christian Church; The Swiss Reformation