"Health and blessing from God our Lord. Dear Francis, proceed gently in the affair; at first throw the bear only one sour pear among many sweet ones; then two, and afterwards three; and when he has begun to eat them, throw him more and more—sour and sweet all together; at last empty the sack entirely, hard and soft, sweet, sour, and unripe; he will eat them all, and will no longer allow them to be taken away, or himself to be driven from them.—Zurich, Monday before St. George's day, 1525.
"Your servant in Christ, Ulrich Zwingle."
There are decisive reasons against the authenticity of this letter.—I. In 1525, Kolb was pastor at Wertheimer; he did not remove to Berne until 1527. (See Zw. Epp. p. 526.)—M. de Haller, indeed, very arbitrarily substitutes 1527 for 1525: this correction was no doubt very well meant; but here, unfortunately, Haller is at variance with Salat and Tschudi, who, although they do not agree as to the day on which this letter was alluded to in the diet, are unanimous as to the year, which with both is clearly 1525.—II. There is a difference as to the manner in which this letter was divulged; according to one version, it was intercepted; according to another, some of Kolb's parishioners communicated it to an inhabitant of the smaller cantons who chanced to be at Berne.—III. The original is in German; but Zwingle always wrote in Latin to his learned friends; and besides, he saluted them as their brother, and not as their servant.—IV. If we read Zwingle's letters, we shall see that it is impossible to find two styles more unlike than that of the pretended letter and his. Zwingle would never have written a letter to say so little; his epistles are generally long and full of news. To call the paltry jest preserved by Salat a letter, is mere mockery.—V. As an historian Salat deserves little confidence, and Tschudi appears to have copied him with a few variations. It is possible that a man of the smaller cantons may have had communication from some Bernese of Zwingle's letter to Haller, which we have mentioned in our second volume (p. 359), where Zwingle employs this same comparison of the bears with much dignity, which moreover occurs in all the authors of that time. This may have suggested to some wag the idea of inventing this spurious letter as addressed by Zwingle to Kolb.
[550] Euerem Herrn Jesu nachfolget in Demuth. Kirchh. Ref. v. B. 60.
[551] Zw. Epp. annotatio, p. 451. The Tscharners of Berne are descended from this marriage.
[552] Herzog, Studien und Kritiken, 1840, p. 334.
[553] Meis sumtibus non sine contemptu et invidia. Œcol. ad Pirekh. de Eucharistia.
[554] Das er kein Predigt thate, er hatte ein mächtig Volk darinn, says his contemporary Peter Ryf. Wirtz. v. 350.
[555] Œcolampadius apud nos triumphat. Eras. ad Zwing. Zw. Epp. p. 312.
[556] Illi magis ac magis in omni bono augescunt. Eras. ad Zwing. Zw. Epp. p. 312.
[557] Et in terram promissionis ducere non potest. L. Epp. ii. 353.