If to be original means simply to be the first to see and make known a single truth or a fresh aspect of a truth, it is possible to contest the claim of Luther to be an original thinker. It would not be difficult to point out anticipations of almost every separate truth which he taught to his generation. To take two only--Wessel had denounced indulgences in language so similar to Luther's, that, when the Reformer read it long after the publication of the _Theses_, he could say that people might well imagine that he had simply borrowed from the old Dutch theologian; and Lefèvre d'Étaples had taught the doctrine of justification by faith before it had flashed on Luther's soul with all the force of a revelation. But if originality be the gift to seize, to combine into one organic whole, separate isolated truths, to see their bearing upon the practical religious life of all men, educated and ignorant, to use the new light to strip the common religious life of all paralysing excrescences, to simplify it and to make it clear that the sum and essence of Christianity is "unwavering trust of the heart in Him who has given Himself to us in Christ Jesus as our Father, personal assurance of faith because Christ with His work undertakes our cause," and to do all this with the tenderest sympathy for every true dumb religious instinct which had made men wander away from the simplicity which is in Christ Jesus, then Luther stands alone in his day and generation, unapproachable by any other. Hence it was that to the common people in every land in Europe up till about 1540, when Calvin's individuality began to make itself felt, Luther represented the Reformation; and all who accepted the new teaching were known as Lutherans, whether in England, the Low Countries, France, or French speaking Switzerland.[7] Ecclesiastical historians of the Reformed Church from the sixteenth century downward have often been inclined to share Luther's supremacy with Zwingli. The Swiss Reformer was gifted with many qualities which Luther lacked. He stood in freer relation to the doctrines and practices of the mediæval Church, and his scheme of theology was perhaps wider and truer than Luther's. He had a keener intellectual insight, and was quicker to discern the true doctrinal tendencies of their common religious verities. But the way in which he regarded indulgences, and his manner of protesting against them, showed his great inferiority to Luther as a religious guide.