herto prevented Christian excommunication. Then
Pastor Bodmer walked up and said to Master Laurence: You lie like a
vagabond and knave, and if he abused him as a Baptist, he did not speak
like a gentleman. Sir Burgomaster! That such a worthy and Christian man
as Master Laurence should be called a vagabond and knave before his own
church, and that by a Baptist, as was certainly done, is to me
intolerable, and I ask that he may be helped to his just rights, so
that such things occur not again. There was such an uproar in the
church--they all rose up, joined together, pressed forward and crowded
so knavishly through each other, that Master Laurence could not observe
who did it. Then the _subvogt_ commanded peace. Such an outbreak did
this Baptist produce."

This, and reports of a similar character, which were sent in from the
canton, induced the government to place Grebel, Manz, and some dozen of
the most stiff-necked rebels of respectable education in the monastery
of the Augustines, where Zwingli and the two other people's priests of
the city received orders to visit them frequently. It was hoped they
would be finally set right. But what a triumph it was for them, when
they succeeded in puzzling Zwingli with one of his own assertions! He
had said that no one, according to the New Testament, had been baptised
a second time. Did he not know that Paul rebaptised those twelve in
Ephesus, who had already been baptised by John?[7] The report of this
victory over the hitherto invincible champion spread through the canton
with amazing rapidity. "He is fallen," so they cried, "the false
prophet, the great dragon; the Spirit of the Lord is with us. The
Gospel will now be everywhere brought to light. Away with taxes! Away
with the sword! No Christian will wish to be a ruler! We are all
brethren. Sell your goods, lay all together on one heap. Let there be
no poor any longer and no rich!" A second conference before a select
assembly had now but little influence. The matter must be decided
before the people, and Zwingli began to arm himself for the work.
Meanwhile, he grappled with the subject in his sermons. He showed the
difference between the baptism of John and that of Paul, brought out
the antagonism between the letter and the spirit, and unfolded the
consequences of the doctrines of the deluded fanatics, in such a clear,
lively and convincing manner, that a storm of applause resounded
through the church at the close of one of th