Zurich, less restrictive.
This conflict of opinion had contributed not a little to the duration
and violence of the old Zurich War, in the preceding century. Now it
revived again, and that at a most unpropitious moment. In the
_Buergerrecht_, stipulations were certainly made in regard to the
Emperor and Empire, as well as the Confederates, so that the
obligations under which the two cities had come toward them, seemed to
be ratified on the face of it; but this same _Buergerrecht_ spoke also
of the possibility of warlike expeditions, the division of whatever
might be conquered, and the privilege of enlarging and extending itself
to other cities and territories. Here lay the manifest germ of a new
confederacy, resting on new foundations, and the subsequent movements
of Zwingli, since expressions incontestibly show that he, more perhaps
than any statesman in Zurich, had thought of such an issue. The further
the Reformation advanced, the more did it appear to him an affair of
historical developement, the author of new conditions in political
life; but to these very changes, many of those, who were favorable to
the new religious views, showed themselves decidedly averse; for to
them the federal compact, under its existing forms, was a thing to be
kept inviolably sacred. The time had come when a two-fold choice was
placed before him; either of his own accord to retire altogether from
the sphere of politics and, plant himself upon purely religious ground,
where he might be unassailable; or else to become more completely a
politician, _i.e._ the soul of a faithful band of the most resolute and
able members of the government, who, now in a narrow circle and in
profound secrecy, prepared and paved the way for the most important
business, such as that for which Zwingli himself, at an earlier period,
had demanded the greatest possible publicity. The embarrassment into
which his retreat would throw the heads of the government, his
unrivalled skill in doing business, the hope, that he might cherish, of
seeing his political plans succeed as well as his reforms in the
church, his own conviction of their necessity in order to uphold the
religious movement, and his peculiar position as the citizen of a free
state, who could not, as a man of science, be overlooked in the
ordering of his country's affairs--all this together drew him toward
the second and more dangerous path.

Although, we observe with concern, that he now takes this path;