For if thou must
suffer on account of thy doctrines know indeed that it cannot be
otherwise. Christ must still suffer in his members. But he will
strengthen them and keep them firm unto the end. God grant his grace to
thee and us. For our parsons are also fierce and wrathful toward us,
and call us villains in the open pulpit and _Satannas in angelos lucis
convertos_ (wicked spirits in the garb of angels of light). In time we
will see this persecution pass over us. Therefore pray God for me."[5]

In accordance with this view, Grebel and his friends prudently avoided
stirring up any formal rebellion. And there is nothing at all to show
that they had any direct share in the political movements, which we
have already narrated, although their doctrines concerning the
fraternal communion of Christians and the unscripturalness of tithes
and rents, as they uttered them in general terms, could not but exert
an indirect influence upon them. But in these discourses they always
added exhortations to a resistance merely passive. By this means they
attracted a crowd of followers, persons of excitable feelings and women
especially, just in proportion as the doctrine of martyrdom stood high
in the Catholic church. Indeed it often seemed as if persecution was
only delayed too long for these people. Grebel thus wrote to Vadianus:
"They talk of disturbers. They can be known by their fruits--decrees of
exile and executions by the sword. I do not think the persecution will
be delayed." But neither Zwingli nor the government thought of such a
proceeding. They freely confessed that this would only aggravate the
evil.

First then, because already, at sundry times, whole troops of these
deluded creatures from Zollikon and the neighboring country, had come
into the city, clad in sackcloth and ashes, and girt about with ropes,
and cried out in the public squares: "Wo to Zurich!" and because a
so-called confession of one of their number, a former monk, who usually
went by the name of George Blaurock (Bluecoat) and whom his disciples
hailed as a second Paul, was spread far and wide and made a great
noise, the government ordered a conference to be held with them at the
council-house. The following are the literal contents of Blaurock's
Confession: "I am a door. He who enters by me will find pasture, but he
who enters elsewhere, is a thief and a murderer, as it is written: I am
a good shepherd; a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep; so I