below upward began already to
appear.

The time was ripe for his great work. Boldness only was needed, to give
the first utterance to that of which the majority were more or less
conscious: The deceit, the abuses that have poisoned our civil as well
as our religious life must be put down. In such moments, the feeling of
deliverance was awakened in every heart: nobler powers, intellectual
activities were stirred up; but mingled at the same time with
hereditary weakness, seductive vices and passions, whose charms he, who
is born of earth, can not wholly resist; and the brave man, who called
the movement into life, had soon to contend less with old enemies,
already half conquered, than with the new ones rising up on all sides.

This was the prospect which unfolded itself to the Reformer, as early
as the year 1523, soon after the first Religious Conference. William
R[oe]ubli, the above-mentioned preacher at Wytikon, Simon Stumpf,
pastor at H[oe]ngg, and even Zwingli's former scholar, friend and
admirer, Conrad Grebel, are known as the first by whom the
congregations were disturbed and seduced into dangerous measures. Among
several points, based on the Gospel as they pretended, none was more
readily seized on by the people than these--that the tithe, according
to the Divine Word, should go exclusively to the benefit of the poor,
and that the taking of interest for money loaned was forbidden. In
fact, deputies from several congregations in the neighborhood of the
city appeared before the Council, on June 22d, with the petition, that,
since the tithe was eleemosynary under the Gospel, and theirs was
uselessly squandered by the canons of the Great Minster, they might be
released from the burden. They were plainly rebuked by the Council in a
scaled letter. It was not right in the government to support error. But
the flame was not in the least smothered by this act; the bait was too
tempting---to free themselves, under the shield of religion, from
a tax, which often before had been resisted. Rude sermons, for and
against the justice of the thing, were multiplied. A book, called
"Chief Articles of Christian doctrine against unchristian Usury,"
written by a Doctor Strauss, and another, entitled "Balaam's
Little Ass," were circulated. It was also asserted that Zwingli
rejected tithes and interest. Grebel even ventured to write to his
brother-in-law, Vadianus, in St. Gall: "You wish for news about the
tithe-business. I can say not