taught, and compelled to believe what may be pleasing to them.

"Ah, dear Confederates! Neither our Lords and Superiors, nor we, ever
had any disposition to rule and lord it over you. We bring and compel
you to receive no new faith. What is our desire and thought? Only that
you and we may remain with each other, dwell peaceably together and
rule as your and our forefathers did in the old, true, Christian faith.
In this your ancestors and yourselves, your canton and your people have
reached great honor. In this did you become Confederates. In this have
your ancestors and ours, you and we gained many honorable victories.
God be praised therefor! With such a faith, and with the universal
Christian Church we desire to remain, and pray God from the heart that
He would prevent you by His grace from separating, not alone from us
Eight Cantons, but much more from all Christendom."

Yet this letter, although made out in the names of the Eight Cantons,
was not signed by Glarus and Solothurn; not by Glarus, because there
also public opinion was rising up more and more in favor of Zwingli's
reforms, which obliged the deputies to be very guarded; not by
Solothurn, because she hesitated about expressing herself so strongly
to her neighbor Bern, to whom she was bound by so many ties. Its
imperious language, though couched in soothing terms, was ill suited to
prevail with Bern. It roused there a feeling of proud independence, and
how deep a wound it made, appears from the answer:

"You begin your letter to us with reproaches of dishonor. Faithful,
dear Confederates, we had expected better things of you. What we did
was done for the Christian purpose of honoring God. We hope that
treaties have in no wise been violated thereby; but, indeed, we would
commend to your consideration, whether the insolent and haughty letter
of your envoys be in accordance with them. You conjecture that our
preachers have been the occasion of this Conference, in order to repair
their injuries at Baden, and color over their defeat. Dear
Confederates, you should not deem us such persons as ever to rest upon
any class of men the ground and assurance of our true, primitive,
Christian faith. Still less can we discover that we have given them too
long a rein, because you are ill pleased that we suffer the uncorrupted
Word of God to be preached and spread every where amongst us. Far be it
from us to cut ourselves off from the Christian Church, whose head is
Christ