To the Most Reverend Father and Lord in Christ, Hugo of Hohenlandenberg, Bishop of Constance, the undersigned offer obedient greeting.
Your Excellency will perhaps wonder, Most Reverend Father, what this unusual action of writing a letter to yourself means, and not without reason. For nature has ordained that the unexpected should create not only wonder, but at times even a feeling of dumfoundedness. Yet we would have you to be entirely free and undisturbed in regard to this matter which we are laying before you. For we do not come to your Excellency in regard to anything very troublesome, but to find help. For we are so sure that you are both a most pious lord and a most loving father that there is nothing we do not promise ourselves
[Zwingli’s Works, ii. 17-25. Translated by Mr. Henry Preble from the]
[original Latin. This paper explains itself. The revelation it makes is curious. The signers]
[had doubtless desire to preach the gospel as they understood it; but they had]
[a much greater desire to be legally married. They must have known that their]
[bishop had no authority to grant their requests. It should be remarked that]
[. when Zwingli and his 10 associates drew up the paper here given they were]
[priests in good and regular standing, and had no idea of leaving the church.]
[Their statements are to be believed. This frank, not to say naive, petition]
[stands against all denials of the unchastity of most of the Swiss clergy. Simul-]
[taneously with its issuance Zwingli issued another, written in German (see his]
[Works, i. 30—51), addressed to the government of the Confederacy, which also]
[was a plea for the free course of the gospel, but particularly that if the bishop]
[should allow the priests to marry the government would allow it and protect]
[the married priests.]
from you. And this the fact itself shows, for we should never have ventured to write to your Fatherhood unless we had had thorough confidence in it. We desire, therefore, humbly to beg you to listen kindly to what we are going to disclose a little later, to hear it graciously, and to take it in good part. This is demanded both by the matter itself which drives us to this appeal and by the office which you fill as a loving father. The matter itself, to come to it at last, is this: Your Most Reverend Fatherhood knows how for a long time the heavenly teachings which God, the Creator of all things, willed to have made plain unto the poor race of men by one no way inferior to himself, by his Son, in all things his equal, have, not without the utmost loss to the cause of salvation, been lying hidden through the ignorance, not to say evil intentions, of certain persons, and how rudely, when he had determined to recall and renew those teachings in our day by a sort of second revelation, certain persons attack or defend them. For all the efforts of these defenders are aimed at putting an end to the whole conflict by the first onset, and if they fail in this they collapse utterly, but the attacking party are so shamelessly persistent in their contention that though thrown upon their backs by the boss of the shield of Holy Writ and pierced by the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, they will not yield, but would rather contend against Christ than abandon their pretensions, until they be compelled to abandon both ChristÁnd their own pretensions, after the fashion of the Jews of old, who having fought against the living Christ till they had slain him, pursued him even when dead, till they all likewise perished themselves. And though we do not by any means. willingly predict this same ill-omened end for the present misguided lot, we cannot help fearing that it may come to pass sometime, and for that we are not without reasons. For as in the old days the Jews cast out in vain from the synagogue those who believed in Christ (for the faith grew more and more each day), so in these days of ours, if any continue to frighten away
or even to destroy the real heralds of Christ, they will meet with the same result. Therefore must the words of Gamaliel be ^ pounded into them often, that they may keep their hands off of those who bring us the commands of heaven. For if it be of God it cannot be destroyed, for it were folly for any to try to fight against God; but if it be of men it will perish of itself. Meanwhile most watchful care should be taken lest, as those poor wretches perished miserably in their doomed city, some disaster overwhelm us unawares. For the word of God has never been disregarded with safety. “Therefore, Most Reverend Father, we beseech you by our Lord Jesus Christ, not to join those who aim at putting under a bushel, nay, at extinguishing, the light that came into the world to illumine all men, and who call evil good and good evil, turning sweet into bitter and light into darkness, but rather to join those who have this one desire, that the whole concourse of Christians return to their head, which is Christ, and form one body in him, and, having received the spirit of God, recognize the blessings bestowed upon them by God. And this we see is by no means the case with those who promise themselves some sort of peace, if human prescriptions be set before Christ even. In God we ought to be made one, for he himself is one. In man, who is constantly divided against himself, how is it possible that we be made one? Christ prayed to the Father to make us one in him, and shall man dare to promise us unity in him? In one God, in one faith, in one baptism we shall certainly be made one, for these are one. In some one man, when there are so many laws contradicting each other and such divergent opinions, so far are we from being made one that in no surer way can we be led astray into error and disagreement than in this. Nay, we see one and the same man often at variance with himself in these points. Those things that we set forth a little while ago and all other things that urge us to unity, whence can they be more clearly and purely got than from their very fountain head? He that draweth from that shall abound