as much as possible
toward a settled understanding, especially on account of the Venitians;
for we may depend very much on the wheel of fortune to bring about,
what we never have been able to accomplish hitherto with great cunning.
Time and opportunity are gone; they will not wait. The raging hand also
is not idle; he prepares one grave after another." Pursuing his design
with unshaken resolution, Zwingli hoped in the end to make it
intelligible to the Swiss cities, who had formed the Christian
_Buergerrecht_, that the alliance must be increased, in order to array
against the great powers pledged for the destruction of liberty, great
ones for its maintenance. In fact, at the close of the year, Strassburg
was also admitted into the _Buergerrecht_; but when this city along
with Zurich and Basel proposed that it should be extended likewise to
the _Landgrave_ of Hess, Bern raised difficulties, and at last refused
consent, with the remark, that she could not justify before her own
subjects the admission of so remote a prince. Zwingli was highly
displeased. "Bern always," he wrote to a friend, "sends _bears_ to
negotiate," and to another: "The Bear is lying in the pains of
travail,--is jealous of the Lion (Zurich) and acts very unfairly
towards him; but in the end she will have done with her tricks and take
the manly resolution to bear away the victory." Certainly the Bernese
government would have reason for anxiety in regard to the growing
preponderance of Zurich in the _Buergerrecht_, if Zwingli could be
supported in it both by Strassburg and the _Landgrave_; but its
reluctance no doubt was just as much owing to its peculiar policy,
which was always less concerned about the infusion of philosophical or
theological principles into the national life, than about the
maintenance of existing treaties and friendly relations as far as
possible with all the Confederates.

The Anabaptists were still very active in Germany, but more so in
Switzerland. In the countries favorable to the Reformation, the people
were more violent, excited and difficult to rule and satisfy. Freedom
of inquiry, of thought, had been applied to political as well as
theological matters. If it was boldly proclaimed from the pulpit: 'The
kingdom of the Pope is not of God, because he lays upon us unnatural
restraint, loads our consciences and makes us carry unnecessary
burdens,' the transition was easy to the question: 'Shall the rule of
the prince draw the ski