Zwingli: Latin Works and Correspondence, Vol. 1

Switzerland, nor because he aimed at protecting the things of God in this way, but because he desired nothing more than that all nations might confess the Lord, and that the extent of the alliance might terrify the minds of the ungodly, and so more easily win them to Christ,

XI. — Two civil wars, called the Cappel Wars, in which Zwingli participated; in the first {152Q) he was in the midst of the deliberations, in the second {1531) he was chosen chaplain.

And so it came even to war, but what kind of war as far as our hero and the men of Zurich are concerned? The kind that Zwingli himself described in the following words to his friends [at Bern, in Works, Schuler and Schulthess ed., vol. viii., 290, dated 1529]: "What I have written to you before I repeat again and again that you may be steady and not afraid of the war. For that peace which some urged so strongly is war not peace, and the war upon which we are entering is peace not war, for we thirst for no man's blood, neither do we propose to shed it even if a disturbance takes place, but we want to cut the sinews of the oligarchy. If this is not done, neither gospel truth nor the gospel ministry will be secure among us. We are meditating nothing cruel; on the contrary all we do is friendly and fatherly. We desire to save some who are perishing through ignorance. We are engaged in the preservation of liberty. Therefore do not turn away in abhorrence from our counsels. They are milder and fairer than they have been represented to you. To all who report us falsely you yield ready credence, whereas you have always thus far had experience of our reliability but of their inconstancy, not to say mendacity. Stand fast therefore in this, that in fidelity to God and man you come up to our promise. Why should I say more? Fear nothing, for we shall so conduct ourselves through the goodness of God and the alliance of all that you will be neither ashamed nor

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apologetic for us." Thus far he. I have transcribed his words the more wilHngly because they testify to you, Agathius, in the most convincing manner how entirely unjust it is to represent Zwingli as sanguinary. He was indeed a brave man in danger, intrepid and wise, but it was as far from him to thirst for the blood of even the most inveterate enemy as it should be from every wise man and every minister of Christ. The liberty of the country, the virtues…