Whilst concord between Zurich and Bern appeared to be restored and their union made stronger than ever, the news of the prevailing alliance was received in Luzern with the liveliest indignation. At a Diet held there, to which he had come on other business, a Bernese ambassador, William von Diessbach, was called to account by the Five Cantons. It is very probable he affirmed that his Lords had a right to make the treaty.--Amid outbursts of displeasure, the session was immediately raised, but after his departure it was again opened. "The Devil take the old faith;" said the Bernese upon the street, "it is no longer tenable." This saying, reported to the sergeants of the Council, increased their wrath. The parties were separated. To organize and strengthen themselves was a natural consequence.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER FIFTH:
Footnote [1] No one will think ill of a Protestant for believing that the Catholic church could exist in greater spiritual unity, worth and security under national bishops, primates and patriarchs, without a Pope.
Footnote [2] For scientific readers: But how near an approach did not the Greeks and Romans already make to it? The old proverb: Mens sana in corpore sano, shows a recognition of the equal position of the world of sense and the world of spirit, as well as their reciprocal necessity. This saying is likewise the key to all philosophy; the clue to reconciliation between spirit and matter, consciousness and guilt, freedom and necessity, self-determination and determination from without.
Footnote [3] The so-called "Scottish Cloisters," to which old St. Gall especially belonged, were zealous in the culture of science. Benedict himself held it in low esteem. The peculiar monasticism, which took its rise from the fanatics of the Thebaid, was, moreover, only a reaction against the preponderance of the sensuous element in Hellenism.
Footnote [4] From Pope Gregory VII., we may date especially the unnatural schism between church and state, which are not two separate elements, but spring from the same root and are filled with the same living power. From this time forward, the Hohenstaufens were obliged to fight against the church, and Adrian and Innocence made war upon the state. Afterwards they strove with equal ill-success to reconcile the parts, which stood over against each other in proud independence. But is a healthy existence conceivable without religion, or an active religion without life? The state would become a philosophical abstraction; the church a deceptive mist-image. The universal church (without form) stands over the state; the established church (with form) in the state. The universal church is only visible in its fruits; the established church in its external arrangement, which it must receive from the state, or subject to its approval. The universal church is unchangeable, eternal; the established church variable, accidental.
Footnote [5] The seventh Sunday after the day of the Holy Three Kings, in old almanacs, is styled, "Alleluia Niederlag" from an ordinance of Alexander II., that on this day, neither the Hallelujah, nor any other song of praise durst be sung.
Footnote [6] Concerning the relation of Zwingli to his age, the author published an article in the Swiss Monthly Chronicle for the year 1819, from which, as the periodical was confined to a narrow circle, he ventures to insert here a short extract. "The great man goes in advance of his age. His bold, firm step wins for him a host of trusting and powerful adherents. Prudence hesitates; fear trembles; and the evil-will refuses to follow him. Self-interest, justly in dread of every blazing up of the truth, mingles in the drama with cunning art; a separation ensues; and he who would bring peace to all the world, has brought a sword; but still completes his work, if he suffer for it, or is so happy as to fall. By the sacrifice of himself the hero becomes a saint. Eyewitnesses of his labors, noble enough to admire him, able enough to support him, but not strong enough to take his place, guard with loving hearts his memory and his words; the solitary staff for a race, which had the desire, but not the requisite maturity, to take into itself the entire spirit of the illustrious dead. More and more was the letter now anxiously guarded, and in it the living, creative spirit was securely and faithfully handed down to a more enlightened age. And this age was first able to understand the great man fully, to prize his services and value his doctrine. It is surprising that centuries ago any one should think, as it delights in thinking; it honors the noble of former times as its spiritual kindred; but let it beware of pride, for if he were to rise again amid the means, the experience, the knowledge of this age, he would soon hasten in advance of it also, as they ever do, who regard not that, which one generation of men style truth, but the eternal fundamental truth of all ages; who have not pious feeling alone--not wisdom alone; to whom alone it is revealed, by whose earnest and constant endeavor it is attained, to be wise and good at the same time."
Footnote [7] It may not be uninteresting to many readers to learn something of the after fate of this man, who occupies so prominent a place in the foregoing history. His last letter to Zwingli, as far as known, is dated February 14th, 1523, and his last to Myconius, September 4th, 1524. In these already he complains of the restless agitation in Basel, rising up in hostility to every more moderate view: "It is my conviction," he writes, "that at present obstacles are thrown in the way of the sciences as well as of the Gospel, by none more than by those who made us believe, they would have swallowed both. Yet one durst not complain aloud; for that old, 'Leave me my Christ untouched,' has lately become a litany among them.'" Now more than ever his life was devoted to the study of Grecian and especially Roman antiquity; for theology and church history he never had any great affection. In the beginnings of the Reformation he looked chiefly at the victory of science, the revival of the study of the languages, the need of a more thorough investigation of the classical ages, and was, therefore, favorable to it. But as soon as this Reformation ventured forth from the narrow circles of the academical lecture-room, the student's chamber and the polite world, to move in which had become a matter of necessity to him, upon the theatre of public life, and appeared under democratic forms; as soon as unlearned advocates for it rose up beside the educated and strove for approval and influence with the people, wounding his refined taste by their rude manners and their rough language, he began to grow uneasy. He feared directly the opposite of what he had first hoped for, the final overthrow of all thorough scientific culture. Of the great transformation wrought in the life of the church and the people, with its beneficial results for religion and politics, he had no sense, because he never traveled beyond his Roman and Grecian studies. The bitterness of his feelings found vent in subtle and sometimes malicious scorn. Even in presence of his scholars and house-companions, whose number, as he always kept a boarding house, was seldom under twenty, he allowed himself to call Œcolampadius "Œcodiabolos" (House-devil), or "Schlampadius." It can readily be imagined that when this became known it created a dislike toward him among his former admirers, and especially among the young. He received an unequivocal proof of it, when passing through Zurich. Having arrived there with wet garments, he asked his host for the loan of a dry coat that he might walk out. The latter assured him, perhaps maliciously, that he had only a yellow one to spare, which he durst not offer him. In spite of the strange color Glareanus put it on; but scarcely had he appeared on the street, when he saw himself surrounded by a troop of mocking school-boys, to whom he had probably been betrayed. "Ay! ay! Glareanus, how you are tricked out! We must learn your verses," and similar things were shouted in his ears. On his return, the landlord met him with the words: "Out of the mouths of children and sucklings hast thou prepared praise for thyself." His opinion of the age became more and more gloomy. His secret grudge against it is particularly visible in his letter to Ægidius Tschudi, who, like him, had remained true to the Catholic confession. "The young men of the present day," he wrote in 1550, "resemble those of Sodom and Gomorah. Drunkenness, perfidy, ungodliness, dishonoring of the holy have overpowered all their natures. Never was the world so corrupt as now." And yet, at that very time, he had often so many hearers in Freiburg, that, instead of the usual lecture-room the Aula (the hall for examinations and celebrations) had to be given up to him. He continued to exercise his chosen calling with unwearied activity, until he closed his eventful life in the seventy-fourth year of his age. It is remarkable that, notwithstanding his dislike to the Reformation, the General Inquisition at Madrid, as late as the year 1667, included him among "the authors of cursed memory, whose works, published or yet to be published, are forbidden without exception."
Footnote [8] The polemical treatise of Erasmus on this same subject appeared earlier; besides, Erasmus was not actually a teacher in the University.