stgoete, who had seized Church tithes and committed every sort
of violence to the priests in Oeland. Against this Brask protested, and
before the year was over Vestgoete was removed. By this time the spirit
of the aged bishop was well-nigh broken. In answer to a summons from
Gustavus in 1526, he wrote the king: "Though shattered by illness and
the infirmities of age, I will obey your orders with all the haste I
can, provided the weather or my death does not prevent me."[139]

Early in 1526, at one of the public fairs, an enthusiast came forward
and announced in public that a leading Lutheran in Stockholm was
preaching heresy, and that the king himself had violated old Church
customs in his food and drink. This silly assertion burst like a bomb
upon the town, and for a short period there was danger that the
fanaticism of the year before would be renewed. However, the excitement
soon died away; and Gustavus, when he heard of it, declared the story to
be a fabrication. "Would to God," he wrote, "that people would examine
into their own lives and not borrow trouble about the lives of others!
Let them first pluck the beam out of their own eye, and then they can
see clearly to pluck the mote out of their brother's eye." Lutheranism
had by this time attained so general acceptance that the monarch deemed
it unnecessary to offer arguments in its support. In August, 1526,
Laurentius Andreae forwarded to the archbishop of Trondhem the New
Testament in Swedish, and added that some two or three hundred copies of
the edition were still unsold, and could be had if he desired them. This
wide-spread distribution of the Scriptures produced its natural effect.
The flame of theological discord that had been slumbering for a year
broke out afresh. Brask, as an offset to the new translation,
interpreted into Swedish some tracts composed in Germany against the
Lutherans; and the monarch, hearing of this move, sent off a letter
commanding the aged bishop to desist. "Report has reached us, venerable
father," he began, "that you have translated into Swedish certain
proclamations of the emperor against the doctrines now current, ... and
that you have circulated them among the common people. We are well aware
that these proclamations are used to cast aspersions on us, since we are
not so zealous as he is in opposition to these doctrines. It is,
therefore, our desire and our command that you be patient, and send
hither certain scholars from your cat