too much to the Cardinal, I
suspect are only friends and well-wishers in appearance, and censure me
for that which, though it were not altogether reasonable, ought to be
allowed on the score of friendship. Rather would I err in thinking well
of a bad man, if I did not know him to be bad, than in thinking ill of
a good one." The fifty florins, which he drew yearly on the order of
the Pope, were laid out only in books and scientific helps, needed for
the better exercise of his calling. This pension he gave up of his own
accord at a later day.

The main charge, however, was directed against his moral conduct. Not
merely gloomy hypocrites, habitual fault-finders, who took offence at
every joke, to which his gay humor may have prompted him, and condemned
his love of music and society, but unprejudiced, worthy men also
regretted that his attentions to the women were not always kept within
proper bounds. It were idle to deny, what he himself openly confessed,
when he bewailed the errors of his youth and strove to do them away by
redoubled zeal and faithfulness to duty. Some excuse may be found for
him in the customs of his age. The failings of superiors were then
treated with indulgence, and a transgression of this kind received but
a mild sentence at the bar of public opinion. His honorable dismissal
from Glarus, given to him only with reluctance, shows, also, that in
spite of occasional short-comings, his character was held in general
esteem. Certainly Catholic writers, since then and even in modern
times, have sought to cast a stain on his later work by laying undue
stress on this weakness of the Reformer's youth.[7] The simple question
may be put to them, 'Are not Augustine and Jerome counted among your
most distinguished saints? And yet you know, or ought to know, what
they have confessed--things that Zwingli had never to renounce.'

He was now past his thirty-first year, and in the full vigor of
manhood. His national sympathies, the extent of his knowledge, his
courage and ability were well known to the inhabitants of Glarus and to
many also beyond the limits of the little Canton. As to matters of
faith the struggle was yet going on in his own bosom. Here, on the one
hand, stood the Church, to whose priesthood he had been consecrated,
with her stiff, unbending dogmas, and her stale, lifeless forms, yet
esteemed holy, to touch which was regarded as an unpardonable crime in
the individual; and there, on the other, eterna