be afforded for explanation and reply in
regard to the point in dispute. The people's priests were to be
exhorted meanwhile to enforce obedience to the rules of fasting.

By this important event, happening in the midst of the highest
authorities of the canton, the fire, which had hitherto existed only in
scattered sparks was now suddenly fanned into a clear blaze. The laity
and priests, the bishop, the government and even the Confederates took
steps, which compelled Zwingli, in the course of the same year to
vindicate himself on all sides, to buckle on his armor for the conflict
and declare himself openly.

The canon Hoffman, stirred up by the legation of the Bishop, was the
first to take the field. A good scholar of the old type, pure in his
morals, in former years a frank and fearless orator of the people,
devoted, as was natural for an old man, to the forms in which he had
moved during a long life, he esteemed it a duty to defend them, and
that so much the more, because he was summoned to the task by the other
clergy. He was lacking, however, in two particulars. According to his
own confession he had heard Zwingli but seldom. Still he received as
truth what was reported to him about his sermons, and boasted too much
of his riper experience against a man scarce forty years old. Making
skillful use of these weak points, the armed warrior advanced the more
resolutely against the rusted weapons of his antagonist. The old man
could not maintain his position. At a later period he once more
regained his courage, and certainly it must be said to his honor, that,
though vanquished, he did not shun the knightly combat.

With great bluntness, and not to a limited circle of associates like
Hoffman, the monks poured out their wrath from the convent-pulpits. The
more tasteless, silly, and ridiculous their revilings were, the more
did they expose themselves to the edge of Zwingli's keen argument and
wit. Without mercy he fell upon these people, among whom, as far as the
monasteries of the city are concerned, not a single one is known, to
whose praise anything can be said. We need only read his writings to
see how, dealing blow upon blow, he pursued them into every corner, and
brought out the truth in the clearness of sunlight against their loose
harangues. But then, in the pride of victory he suffered himself to run
perhaps into an extreme, which did not comport well with the
earnestness of the pulpit or of controversy conducted