Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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On the 9th of February, 1529, an unbloody revolution broke out. Aroused
by the intrigues of the Roman party, the Protestant citizens to the number
of two thousand came together, broke to pieces the images still left, and
compelled the reactionary Council to introduce everywhere the form of
religious service practised in Zürich.
Erasmus, who had advised moderation and quiet waiting for a general
Council, was disgusted with these violent, measures, which he describes in
a letter to Pirkheimer of Nürnberg, May 9, 1529. “The smiths and
workmen,” he says, “removed the pictures from the churches, and heaped
such insults on the images of the saints and the crucifix itself, that it is quite
surprising there was no miracle, seeing how many there always used to
occur whenever the saints were even slightly offended. Not a statue was
left either in the churches, or the vestibules, or the porches, or the
monasteries. The frescoes were obliterated by means of a coating of lime;
whatever would bum was thrown into the fire, and the rest pounded into
fragments. Nothing was spared for either love or money. Before long the
mass was totally abolished, so that it was forbidden either to celebrate it in
one’s own house or to attend it in the neighboring villages.” f177
The great scholar who had done so much preparatory work for the
Reformation, stopped half-way and refused to identify himself with either
party. He reluctantly left Basel (April 13, 1529) with the best wishes for
her prosperity, and resided six years at Freiburg in Baden, a sickly,
sensitive, and discontented old man. He was enrolled among the professors
of the University, but did not lecture. He returned to Basel in August,
1535, and died in his seventieth year, July 12, 1536, without priest or
sacrament, but invoking the mercy of Christ, repeating again and again, “O
Lord Jesus, have mercy on me!” He was buried in the Minster of Basel.
Glareanus and Beatus Rhenanus, humanists, and friends of Zwingli and
Erasmus, likewise withdrew from Basel at this critical moment. Nearly all
the professors of the University emigrated. They feared that science and
learning would suffer from theological quarrels and a rupture with the
hierarchy.
The abolition of the mass and the breaking of images, the destruction of the
papal authority and monastic institutions, would have been a great calamity
had they not been followed by the constructive work of the evangelical
faith which was the moving power, and which alone could build up a new
Church on the ruins of the old. The Word of God was preached from the