In Switzerland from 1516 to 1525 - James Aitken Wylie

efused Christian burial, to read the writings of
Zwingli or of Luther, or to speak a word in private
or public, to the disparagement of the "holy rites
and customs of the Church." By these means, the
Roman ecclesiastics hoped utterly to discredit
Zwingli with the people. They only extended the
reputation they meant to ruin. The pastoral was
taken to pieces by Zwingli in a tractate, entitled
Archeteles (the beginning and the end), which over
flowed with hard argument and trenchant humor.
The stereotyped and vapid phrases in which the
bishops indulged, fell pointless compared with the
convincing reasonings of the Reformer, backed as
these were by facts drawn from the flagrant abuses
of the Church, and the oppressions under which
Switzerland groaned, and which were too patent to
be denied by any save those who had a hand in
their infliction, or were interested in their support.
The first three attacks having failed to destroy
Zwingli, or arrest his work, the fourth was now
launched against him. It was the most formidable
of the four. The Diet, the supreme temporal power
in the Swiss Confederacy, was then sitting at
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