d succor against us, all for the suppression
of the Divine Word and of the duty, which our people owe to us, it is
not only becoming in us, but our great necessity demands it, so that
the Divine Word and evangelical truth may not in any measure be kept
down by outrage and violence, but that we and ours may be allowed to
remain in the free enjoyment thereof without any fear or terror of
man."--And thus one measure of mistrust and dislike continually
provoked another still more hostile. There was less and less
concealment in the efforts of each to strengthen their party.

Any one acquainted with the history of Switzerland knows what ties of
relationship, of agreement in their manners and mode of living, and
neighborly intercourse existed from the most ancient times, between the
inhabitants of Obwalden and those of the Haslithal and a part of the
Bernese Oberland. Their friendship was kept alive by popular festivals
celebrated in common, and also by the reverence which was paid,
especially in the interior of Switzerland, to Saint Beatus, who, as the
first promulgator of Christianity in that region, dwelt in a cave on
the shore of lake Thun, called by his name, and received canonization.
Numerous pilgrimages were made thither from the Five Cantons. The
rumor, that the relics of the saint, exhibited there on such occasions,
had been cast into the lake by order of the Bernese government,
awakened universal indignation. But this was not true. Two deputies of
the Council had taken possession of them in order to carry them to
Interlachen and bury them afterward. In complaints against the
abolition of their pilgrimages, the inhabitants of the Bernese Oberland
joined with their neighbors of Unterwalden. Pastoral races are very
tenacious of old customs. If these be taken away their respect for law
is often shaken at the same time. The government of Bern had to
experience this. Between the two lakes of Thun and Brienz lay, under
the lordly supervision of Bern, the wealthy Augustinian cloister of
Interlachen. Its domain extended over a great part of the surrounding
country and through the mountain-valleys of Lauterbrunnen and
Grindelwald. The monks of that period were in good repute neither for
their learning nor their morals. The Provost himself Nicholas Trachsel,
was destitute both of external and internal dignity. And when the
doctrines in regard to the uselessness of monkery, the unscripturalness
of spiritual lordship, and the ri