ms included the abolition of
processions, of confirmation and of extreme unction. With homely
caution, a large number of simple souls had this administered to them
just before the time allotted for its last celebration. Organs were
taken out of the churches, and regular lectures on the Bible given.

Alarmed by these innovations the five original cantons,--Unterwalden,
Uri, Schwyz, Lucerne and Zug,--formed a league in 1524 to suppress the
"Hussite, Lutheran, and Zwinglian heresies." For a time it looked like
war. Zwingli and his advisers drew up a remarkably thorough plan of
campaign, including a method of securing allies, many military details,
and an ample provision for prayer for victory. War, however, was
averted by the mediation of Berne as a friend of Zurich, and the
complete religious autonomy of each canton was guaranteed.

The Swiss Reformation had to run the same course of separation from the
humanists and radicals, and of schism, as did the German movement.
Though Erasmus was a little closer to the Swiss than he had been to the
Saxon Reformers, he was alienated by the outrageous taunts of some of
them and by the equally unwarranted attempts of others to show that he
agreed {154} with them. "They falsely call themselves evangelical," he
opined, "for they seek only two things: a salary and a wife."

Then came the break with Luther, of which the story has already been
told. The division was caused neither by jealousy, nor by the one
doctrine--that of the real presence--on which it was nominally fought.
There was in reality a wide difference between the two types of
thought. The Saxon was both mystic and a schoolman; to him religion
was all in all and dogma a large part of religion. Zwingli approached
the problem of salvation from a less personal, certainly from a less
agonized, and from a more legal, liberal, empiric standpoint. He felt
for liberty and for the value of common action in the state. He
interpreted the Bible by reason; Luther placed his reason under the
tuition of the Bible in its apparent meaning.

[Sidenote: Anabaptists, 1522]

Next came the turn of the Anabaptists--those Bolsheviki of the
sixteenth century. Their first leaders appeared at Zurich and were for
a while bosom friends of Zwingli. But a parting of the ways was
inevitable, for the humanist could have little sympathy with an
uncultured and ignorant group--such they were, in spite of the fact
that a few leaders were unive