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of that place to the king of France. The Swiss troops in the pay of France soon after suffered a severe defeat from the emperor's army, at Bicocca, and lost three thousand men. The remainder returned home humbled and dispirited to the greatest degree; which produced for the time a disgust for these foreign services, particularly in the canton of Schweitz, on which the loss had chiefly fallen.2

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A. D. 1522.

tion to the

Schweitz.

Zwingle, who felt a particular interest for a zwingle's canton in which he had for some years been Exhorta stationed and patronised, failed not to avail Canton of himself of this opportunity to promote an object which he thought of the greatest consequence to his country. He immediately addressed to May 14. the canton, "A friendly exhortation to shun the alliance of princes, and the insidious pensions of strangers. A noble spirit of piety and patriotism breathes throughout this composition. He condoles with his countrymen under their calamity, but implores them to consider to what causes it might be traced, and what lessons they ought to learn from it. He complains of the decay of piety, and of the increase of pride and self-confidence. The people had been led to think nothing beyond their power, and were ready to adopt the impious boastings of those who said, "We have made a covenant with death; and with hell are we at agreement: when the overflowing scourge shall pass over, it shall not come unto us.' "93 Therefore God contended with them, and brought them down.He contrasted the wars in which they engaged with those in which their ancestors had contended for liberty, for safety, and almost for existence.

1 Robertson's Charles V. ii. 195.

3

2 Ru. i. 76-88, 99-101. Hess, 101-113. ' Isa. xxviii. 15.

CHAP.

XV.

66

Those were no mercenary wars. They had
had no such thirst for foreign gold, as to be
willing for the sake of it to shed the blood of
men with whom they had no ground of quarrel."
The Swiss nation, he is bold to affirm, had lost
more men, and suffered more fatal defeats, in
the wars of Naples, Navarre, and Milan, in which
they really had no interest, than in all other dis-
putes which had arisen since the first establish-
ment of their union.-He then describes the
excesses of which their soldiers were guilty in
this mercenary warfare, such that if they were
practised upon themselves, and were not followed
with speedy vengeance, they would be ready to
blaspheme the tardy justice of heaven. He des-
cants also on the vices which their troops who
returned home imported into their country;
on the mischiefs, rather than benefits, which
the community derived from the subsidies; and
on other topics; and concludes with earnestly ex-
horting them to repentance, and works meet for
repentance. "If Christ," said he, " warned men
to repent from the calamities which had befallen
others, how much more should they be warned
by the calamities which they had themselves
suffered, in the persons of so many of their own
countrymen and relations? We may well ima-
gine that we hear him proclaim to us, Except ye
repent, ye shall all likewise perish. If however
they would hear his voice, and turn from their
sins, and among them from these foreign alli-
ances and mercenary wars, the promises of God
(to say nothing of the situation of their country,
fenced in by the Alps and the Rhine,) might
give them abundant assurance of security.1

1 Zuing. Op. i. fo. 154-160. One plea for these foreign services is, the keeping up of a military spirit for their own

A. D. 1521.

Happy it is for a country, no less than for an individual, when under its afflictions it has "with it a messenger, an interpreter" of the divine dispensations, to whom it will hearken, so as to be turned from its sins, and directed into the way of righteousness. The frankness and fidelity of Zwingle did not displease the canton of Schweitz: and their chief secretary soon after, though it would seem only in his own name, returned him the most cordial acknowledgments for his address. The result was, Success of the passing of a law abolishing all foreign alli- his opposi ances and pensions-though only for twenty-five foreign years. Lasting effects, however, followed the pensions. exertions of Zwingle and his associates in other cantons. Till the year 1777, "none of the protestant states received any pensions from France; " and then only "the protestants of Glaris and Appenzel, and the town of Bienne."2

tion to

Zuric.

1521.

Apr. 27.

During the progress of these events Zwingle He is made received an additional testimony of the esteem a Canon of in which he was held at Zuric, in his election to a canonry in the cathedral, vacant by the resignation of Henry Engelhardt, a person of eminence, and a favourer of the reformation, who was also pastor of the Abbey Church. Zwingle's appointment was announced to him by a letter from the authorities of the city, bearing an honourable testimony to his character and services. Those more elevated situations however, whether in the church or in civil life, which we are apt to covet, seldom add to the

security. In Hess, 114-117, the reader may see a good
specimen, sufficiently faithful to the original, of the reformer's
soul-stirring eloquence on the subject before us.
Ru. i. 101.

J. H. Hottinger, vi. 359.

2 Coxe, Let. 21.

XV.

His labours

and conflicts.

Dec. 4.

CHAP. happiness of their possessors: and accordingly Zwingle found this station involve him in new cares, and expose him to new vexations. In a letter to Haller, chiefly treating of some cases of conscience, he thus describes the incessant engagements which pressed upon him. "The hurry of business and the care of the churches occupy me to such a degree, that Dr. Engelhardt lately told me, he wondered that I had not before this time become distracted. For instance, I have been ten times called off since I began this letter. From Suabia they write to me for what I am not competent to perform for them; though I do what I can. From every part of Switzerland I am applied to by those who are in difficulties for Christ's sake. If however any thing occurs in which I can be of use to you, do not spare me for I hope for more leisure.... Put a candid construction on what I write: but do not set down for oracles what I send merely as the offerings of good-will. I only suggest what may give an impulse to your own thoughts." One while he even felt himself so much harassed as to entertain thoughts of relinquishing his situation: but, shortly after, his confidence in God revived, and we find him writing in a noble spirit to his friend Myconius, as one prepared to despise all difficulties and encounter all dangers rather than desert his post. "Such," says he, "are the storms that beat upon the house of God, and threaten to overthrow it, that, unless the Lord himself had evidently appeared to watch over it, I should long since have given it up for lost. But, when I see that the vessel of the church is

1522.

1 Ec. et Z. Epist. 39 (b).

in every case piloted and controlled by him, and that he even commands the winds and the waves, I should be a coward indeed, and unworthy the name of a man, should I disgracefully ruin myself by quitting my station. I therefore commit myself entirely to his care and kindness.1

A. D. 1522.

of his mind.

These letters make a very satisfactory im- Good state pression concerning the state of the writer's mind. All his time and all his powers are engrossed in the service of his divine Master: he is ready to assist all his fellow-servants, to the best of his ability, but without presuming to dictate to them-he would not have his counsels taken for "oracles." At the same time he experiences the conflicts of the Christian, and obtains the Christian victory. He has the sentence of death in himself;" but only" that he may not trust in himself, but in God that raiseth the dead."2-His "hope for more leisure" is one which we all indulge, but which the faithful servant of God must scarcely expect to be realized till incapacity lays him. aside, or death transmits him to "the rest that remaineth for the people of God."

Among the individuals whose intercourse with Francis Zwingle about this time proved of great service service Lambert. to him, was Francis Lambert, a native of Avignon, and a Franciscan of the strictest class, who had been for fifteen years a reader in divinity in his own country. To a certain extent he had become acquainted with the truths of the gospel, and he appears, like Apollos, to have been "an eloquent man," and full of zeal to commu

1 J. H. Hott. vi. 235. viii. 270. Gerd. i. 266-7.
2 2 Cor. ii. 8—10.

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