esigns. And though it
should happen, it will only redound to His honor and glory."

From these and similar reports we may certainly infer, that the
deputies of the Five Cantons, as well as the abbot of St. Gall, did
their utmost in Augsburg, to win over the Emperor and individual
members of the Imperial Diet to their cause, and found also zealous
advocates. Yet no record of any formal resolution passed in their
favor, or a revival of their alliance with Austria, is extant. On the
contrary, they appear to have returned home not altogether satisfied,
and toward the close of the year 1530, their general behavior exhibits
more of despondency than hope, whilst Zurich assumed a still more
hostile attitude; and Zwingli himself was little inclined to oppose it.
Through his efforts, his exhortations, his correspondence, his travels
the Reformed party grew stronger day by day. Zurich was everywhere
ready with her mediation, or protection--with complaints, if the Five
Cantons, with threats, if their subjects endeavored to prevent the
preaching of the Gospel. Here, in the territories, in which the
Catholic states also had a share, a monastery was broken up to-day,
because the mass of its occupants so desired, and sometimes too, as
happened at Katharinenthal, near Diessenhofen, because intimidated by
force and terror, and there to-morrow, in a parish hitherto devoted to
the old faith, the Reformation, after repeated voting, was carried by a
small majority. Of course a preacher was immediately sent thither, and
rarely did they stop, until they had obliged the ejected Catholic
priest to retire. Some time previous, the Thurgovian _landweibel_ (high
sergeant), one of the most powerful props of the Old Faith party, when
passing through Zurich in the retinue of a _landvogt_ from Unterwalden,
had been there thrown into prison and beheaded; and the _landvogt_
Stocker from Zug, on complaint made to Zurich by the Thurgovians, found
himself, through the assistance which the former granted to the people,
compelled to flee the territory. The _landvogt_ Kretz from Unterwalden
met with the same treatment in the Rheinthal, but in this case without
the aid of Zurich. It certainly cannot be denied, that a considerable
portion of the clergy--of the monks, who were ejected from the
Territories in consequence of the Reformation, were men without
knowledge, often without morals and generally of little worth, and that
the three civil functionaries just-me