He spoke with the same frankness to legate Pucci. Four times did he return to the charge. "With the help of God," said he to him, "I will continue to preach the gospel, and this preaching will shake Rome." Then he pointed out to him what was necessary to save the Church. Pucci promised every thing, but did nothing. Zuinglius declared that he renounced the pension from the pope. The legate entreated him to retain it; and Zuinglius, who at that time had no thought of placing himself in open hostility to the head of the Church, consented for three years to receive it. "But think not," added he, "that for the love of money I retrench a single syllable of the truth."[678] Pucci, alarmed, made the Reformer be appointed chaplain acolyte to the pope. It was an avenue to new honours. Rome thought to frighten Luther by sentences of condemnation, and to win Zuinglius by favours—darting her excommunications at the one, and displaying her gold and magnificence to the other. She thus endeavoured, by two different methods, to attain the same end, and silence the bold lips which dared, in spite of the pope, to proclaim the Word of God in Germany and Switzerland. The latter method was the more skilful, but neither of them succeeded. The enfranchised souls of the preachers of truth were equally inaccessible to menace and favour.
THE BISHOP OF CONSTANCE. SAMSON AND INDULGENCES.
Another Swiss prelate, Hugo of Landenberg, bishop of Constance, at this time gave some hopes to Zuinglius. He ordered a general visitation of the churches. But Landenberg, a man of no character, allowed himself to be led alternately by Faber, his vicar, and by an abandoned female, from whose sway he was unable to escape. He occasionally appeared to honour the gospel, and yet any one who preached it boldly was in his eyes only a disturber. He was one of those men too common in the Church, who, though loving truth better than error, have more indulgence for error than for truth, and often end by turning against those with whom they ought to make common cause. Zuinglius applied to him, but in vain. He was to have the same experience which Luther had; to be convinced that it was useless to invoke the heads of the Church, and that the only method of restoring Christianity was to act as a faithful teacher of the Word of God. An opportunity of doing so soon occurred.
In August, 1518, a Franciscan monk was seen travelling on the heights of St. Gothard, in those lofty passes which have been laboriously cut across the steep rocks separating Switzerland from Italy. Having come forth from an Italian convent, he was the bearer of papal indulgences which he was commissioned to sell to the good Christians of the Helvetic league. Brilliant success, obtained under two preceding popes, had signalised his exertions in this shameful traffic. Companions, intended to puff off the merchandise which he was going to sell, were accompanying him across mountains of snow and ice coeval with the world. This avaricious band, in appearance miserable enough, and not unlike a band of adventurers roaming for plunder, walked in silence, amid the noise of the foaming torrents which give rise to the Rhine, the Reuss, the Aar, the Rhone, the Tessino, and other rivers, meditating how they were to plunder the simple population of Helvetia. Samson (this was the Franciscan's name) and his company first arrived in Uri, and there commenced their traffic. They had soon done with these poor peasants, and passed into the canton of Schwitz. Here Zuinglius was, and here the combat between these two servants of two very different masters was to take place. "I can pardon all sins," said the Italian monk, the Tezel of Switzerland. "Heaven and hell are subject to my power, and I sell the merits of Jesus Christ to whoever will purchase them, by paying in cash for an indulgence."
Zuinglius heard of these discourses, and his zeal was inflamed.
STAPFER AND ZUINGLIUS.
He preached powerfully against them. "Jesus Christ, the Son of God," said he, "thus speaks, 'Come unto ME, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' Is it not then audacious folly and insensate temerity to say on the contrary, Purchase letters of indulgence! run to Rome! give to the monks! sacrifice to the priests! If you do these things I will absolve you from your sins![679] Jesus Christ is the only offering; Jesus Christ is the only sacrifice; Jesus Christ is the only way."[680]
Every body at Schwitz began to call Samson rogue and cheat. He took the road to Zug, and for this time the two champions failed to meet.
Scarcely had Samson left Schwitz when a citizen of this canton, named Stapfer, a man of distinguished talent, and afterward secretary of state, was with his family reduced to great distress. "Alas," said he, when applying in agony to Zuinglius, "I know not how to satisfy my own hunger and the hunger of my poor children."[681] Zuinglius knew to give where Rome knew to take; he was as ready to practise good works, as to combat those who taught that they were the means of obtaining salvation. He daily gave liberally to Stapfer.[682] "It is God," said he, anxious not to take any glory to himself, "It is God who begets charity in the believer, and gives him at once the thought, the resolution, and the work itself. Whatever good a righteous man does it is God who does it by his own power."[683] Stapfer remained attached to him through life; and, four years after, when he had become secretary of state, and felt wants of a higher kind, he turned towards Zuinglius, and said to him with noble candour, "Since you provided for my temporal wants, how much more may I now expect from you wherewith to appease the hunger of my soul!"
The friends of Zuinglius increased. Not only at Glaris, Bâle, and Schwitz, did he find men of like spirit with himself; in Uri there was the secretary of state, Schmidt; at Zug, Colin Müller and Werner Steiner, his old companions in arms at Marignan: at Lucerne, Xylotect and Kilchmeyer; Wittembach at Berne, and many others in many other places. But the curate of Einsidlen had no more devoted friend than Oswald Myconius. Oswald had quitted Bâle in 1516, to take charge of the cathedral school at Zurich. In this town there were no learned men, and no schools of learning. Oswald laboured along with some well-disposed individuals, among others, Utinger, notary to the pope, to raise the Zurich population out of ignorance and initiate them in ancient literature. At the same time he defended the immutable truth of the Holy Scriptures, and declared that if the pope or emperor gave commands contrary to the gospel, obedience was due to God alone, who is above both emperor and pope.