The active aggressive Reformation began in Germany with Luther's attack on Indulgences. In France it made no headway for many years; in Spain and Italy none at all; in England none, till the meeting of Parliament in 1529. But the movement in Switzerland was as marked as that in Germany, and hardly less important in the influence ultimately exercised by the Swiss teachers, though of less direct political weight. Nor is it possible to follow the course of the Reformation in England, unless the separate existence of the Swiss School is duly appreciated. Switzerland was not a Political entity which could rank effectively as a make-weight in international rivalries; but its geographical conditions preserved it from interference, and permitted it, so to speak, to work out its own salvation. The country was a federation of small democratic States or Cantons, with no Princes and no nobility. It followed that when once the question of ecclesiastical reform was raised, the theories of Church Government which would find acceptance would be democratic in principle: and accordingly it was from Switzerland that the vital opposition to Episcopal systems sprang. But the main fact to be observed at this stage is, that the Swiss Reformers were not the outcome of the Lutheran movement; their movement was spontaneous, independent, and parallel. Their leader Zwingli anticipated rather than followed Luther. But an agitator who appealed to Germany and an agitator who appealed to Switzerland seemed to be of very different degrees of public importance. Hence comparatively speaking Zwingli was ignored by the authorities. Half Switzerland might--and did--revolt from the Pope, without greatly exercising the Papal mind. But in the process Zurich became hardly less important as a teaching centre and an asylum for heretical refugees than Wittenberg; and in many respects, the teaching of Zurich departed from the teaching of Rome more seriously than did the teaching of Luther. The element of Mysticism, to which the German genius is generally prone, had no attraction for the Swiss mind, while it was essential in the eyes of the Wittenberg school; so that Luther and the Zurich Reformers assailed each other with hardly less virulence than they both lavished on the Papal party. It was a long time before the term "Protestant" was extended so as to include the disciples of Zurich and Geneva. [Sidenote: English heretics abroad]