esent at the conflict in Bern. On New Year's evening fifteen hundred
and twenty-eight were entertained at the chamber of the Canons by the
government of Zurich. The day following, preachers and scholars, more
than a hundred in number, they set out, surrounded by a troop of armed
men to command respect, for it had been rumored that in the free
bailiwicks, where the Five Cantons swayed the majority of the rulers,
they would be threatened with danger. They reached Bern on the third
evening, where also [OE]colampadius and the theologians of Strassburg,
Bucer and Capito, had already arrived. Religion had put science in
motion. From the union of both, politics were to receive their
direction. The events in Bern were to determine the fate of
Switzerland. Statesmen as well as scholars acknowledged this. The city
had neglected nothing in order to make clear its honor, its rectitude
and its hospitality. The government had exhibited firmness on all
sides. To the Emperor himself, who in a very earnest tone had issued a
positive command to abolish the Conference, it had been replied
respectfully, but decidedly, that the preparations had already gone too
far to permit this.

On the sixth of January the business was opened in the church of the
Franciscans. Of splendid accommodations for one party and mean ones for
the other, as at Baden, there was nothing to be seen. Several times
were the opponents of the Reformers requested to assist each other.
"You see"--said the _landvogt_ Manuel, who was appointed to summon the
speakers according to the rules--"how _they_ confess the articles to be
good, and faithfully keep together; therefore, I pray and warn you once
more, for God's sake, to bring into one place your opposing speakers,
and assist each other by counsel, writing and speaking. This our
gracious Lords will accept with great gratitude as a favorable token of
your good-will."

Into the particulars of the Conference it is not needful to
enter here. The whole story and the result are pictured for us in a
report, still extant, from the pen of a zealous Catholic, who was an
ear-and-eye-witness: "What I have so often said," writes Jacob of
Muenster, priest at Solothurn, to a lawyer in Mayence--"has been
clearly exhibited at this heretical gathering. We are going downwards,
only by our own indolence, and because the head's of our church do
nothing for science. Several of our adherents in Bern, hitherto members
of the government, had imp