Berthold Haller, probably because he was not a Swiss, had not signed the petitions. But full of courage, he, like Zuinglius, expounded the gospel according to Matthew. A vast crowd filled the cathedral of Berne. The word of God operated more powerfully on the people than Manuel's dramas. Haller was summoned to the Town House; the people accompanied their good-natured pastor, and remained around the spot. The council was divided. "This concerns the bishop," said the leading men. "The preacher must be handed over to my lord of Lausanne." The friends of Haller trembled at these words, and told him to withdraw as quickly as possible. The people flocked round, and accompanied him to his house, where a great number of burghers remained in arms prepared to make a rampart of their bodies in defence of their humble pastor. The bishop and council were overawed by this energetic demonstration, and Haller was saved. Haller was not the only combatant at Berne. Sebastian Meyer at this time refuted the pastoral letter of the Bishop of Constance, and in particular the formidable charge, "that the gospellers teach a new doctrine, but that the old doctrine is the true." "To be wrong for two thousand years," said Meyer, "is not to be right for a single hour; otherwise the heathen ought to have adhered to their belief. If the most ancient doctrines must carry the day, fifteen hundred years are more than five hundred years, and the gospel is more ancient than the ordinances of the pope."[891]
MYCONIUS PERSECUTED.
At this period the magistrates of Friburg intercepted letters addressed to Haller and Meyer by a canon of Friburg, named John Hollard, a native of Orb. They imprisoned, then deposed, and at last banished him. John Vannius, a chorister in the cathedral, shortly after embraced the evangelical doctrine; for in the Christian warfare one soldier no sooner falls than another takes his place. "How could the muddy water of the Tiber," said Vannius, "subsist beside the pure water which Luther has drawn from the spring of St. Paul." But the chorister's mouth was also closed. Myconius wrote to Zuinglius, "Scarcely will you find in Switzerland men more averse to the gospel than the Friburghers."[892]
Lucerne ought to have been stated as an exception. This Myconius knew. He had not signed the famous petitions, but his friends had if he had not, and a victim was required. The ancient literature of Greece and Rome began, thanks to him, to shed some light in Lucerne; numbers arrived from different quarters to attend the learned professor, and the friends of peace were charmed with sounds sweeter than those of halberds, swords, and cuirasses, which alone had hitherto resounded in the warlike city. Oswald had sacrificed everything for his country. He had quitted Zurich and Zuinglius; he had lost his health; his wife was pining;[893] his son was in childhood; if even Lucerne rejected him he could nowhere hope for an asylum. But no matter; factions have no pity, and the thing which ought to excite their compassion stimulates their rage. Herbenstein, burgomaster of Lucerne, an old and valiant warrior who had gained a distinguished name in the wars of Suabia and Burgundy, followed up the deposition of the teacher, and wished to banish, from the canton, with himself, his Greek, his Latin, and his gospel. He succeeded. On coming out of the Council, after the sederunt at which Myconius had been deposed, Herbenstein met the Zurich deputy, Berguer. "We are sending you back your schoolmaster," said he to him ironically, "get a good lodging for him." "We won't let him sleep in the open air,"[894] immediately replied the courageous deputy. But Berguer promised more than he could perform.
OSWALD PERSECUTED.
The news given by the burgomaster were but too true, and were soon intimated to the unhappy Myconius. He is deposed and banished, and the only crime laid to his charge is that of being a disciple of Luther.[895] He looks all around but nowhere finds a shelter. He sees his wife, his son, and himself, all three feeble and sickly, exiled from their country, and Switzerland, all around agitated by a whirlwind, which breaks and destroys every thing that stands in its way. "Here," said he then to Zuinglius, "is poor Myconius banished by the council of Lucerne.[896]... Whither shall I go? I know not.... Assailed yourself by these furious storms how could you shelter me? I cry then in my distress to that God who is the first in whom I hope, who is ever bountiful, ever kind, and who never calls upon any to seek his face in vain. May He supply my wants!"
Thus spoke Oswald, and he was not obliged to wait long for a word of consolation. There was one in Switzerland inured to the battles of the faith. Zuinglius drew near to his friend, and comforting him, thus expressed himself, "The blows by which men attempt to overthrow the house of God are so violent, and the assaults which they make upon it so frequent that not only do the wind and rain beat upon it, as our Saviour predicted, (Matt. vii, 27,) but the hail and the thunder.[897] Had I not perceived the Lord guiding the ship I should, long ere now, have cast the helm into the sea, but I see him amid the tempest, strengthening the tackling, arranging the yards, stretching the sails, what do I say? commanding the very winds.... Should I not then be a coward unworthy of the name of a man if I abandoned my post and fled to a shameful death? I confide entirely in his sovereign goodness. Let him govern, transport, hasten, retard, precipitate, arrest, break down, let him even plunge us to the bottom of the abyss, we fear nothing.[898] We are vessels which belong to him. He can use us as he pleases, for honour or disgrace." After words thus full of faith Zuinglius continues. "As to your case this is my opinion. Present yourself before the council, and there deliver an address worthy of Christ and of yourself, that is to say, proper to touch and not to irritate men's hearts. Deny that you are a disciple of Luther, declare that you are a disciple of Jesus Christ. Let your pupils surround you, and let them speak, and if all this does not succeed, come to your friend, come to Zuinglius, and consider our home as your own fireside."
OSWALD PERSECUTED.
Oswald, strengthened by these words, followed the noble counsel of the Reformer, but all his efforts were useless. The witness to the truth behoved to quit his country. His enemies in Lucerne were so loud against him, that the magistrates would not allow any one to give him an asylum. Broken-hearted at the sight of so much enmity, the confessor of Jesus Christ exclaimed, "All that now remains for me is to beg from door to door to sustain my miserable life."[899] Shortly after, the friend and most powerful assistant of Zuinglius, the first man in Switzerland who had united literary instruction with the love of the gospel, the reformer of Lucerne, and at a later period one of the leaders of the Helvetic church, was obliged, with his sickly wife and little boy, to quit this ungrateful city, where, out of all his family, the only one who had received the gospel was a sister. He crossed its ancient bridges, and bade adieu to those mountains which seem to rise from the bosom of the lake of Waldstetten up to the clouds. Canons Xylotect and Kilchmeyer, the only friends whom the Reformation yet numbered among his countrymen, followed shortly after. And, at the moment when this poor man, with two feeble companions, whose existence depended on him, with his eye turned towards its lake, and shedding tears for his deluded country, took leave of those sublime scenes which had surrounded his cradle, the gospel itself took leave of Lucerne, and Rome reigns in it to this day.
Shortly after the Diet itself, which was assembled at Baden, stung by the petitions of Einsidlen, (which, being printed, produced a great sensation,) and urged by the Bishop of Constance to strike a blow at innovations, had recourse to measures of persecution, ordered the authorities of the villages to bring before it all priests and laymen who should speak against the faith, seized, in its impatience, on the evangelist, who happened to be nearest at hand, Urban Weiss, pastor of Filispach, who had been previously released on caution, made him be brought to Constance, and then gave him up to the bishop, by whom he was long kept in prison. "Thus," says the Chronicle of Bullinger, "the persecution of the gospel by the confederates commenced, and that at the instigation of the clergy, who have at all times delivered Jesus Christ to Herod and Pilate."[900]