Even in those districts which, from their nearness to Austria, were more subject to clerical authority, the Gospel was also making progress. For some time the struggle between the two doctrines was very sharp at Raab. The evangelicals in this town were without pastors, and a military prefect well-disposed towards the Reformation gave them one. At Stuhlweissenburg the Roman Catholics beset the justice of the town with their entreaties. ‘Prohibit,’ they said, ‘the preaching of the Gospel and the distribution of the Supper in both kinds, and put in prison the ministers and the communicants.’ The justice, a righteous and God-fearing man, firmly replied—‘In this matter I will obey God rather than men; in all things else I will fulfil my function.’ This man was a soldier who knew the commander whom he must before all obey.[577] It was, however, chiefly in Upper Hungary and Transylvania that ruin was impending over the Roman Church. The influence of the conference of Schässburg was still very powerful there. Many of the inhabitants of these countries, hitherto heedless of the work of reformation, and even full of prejudices respecting it, began seriously to reflect on this great spiritual movement which was shaking the nations, and applied themselves to the reading of the ancient Scriptures of God, in which they recognized the active principles of the transformation of which they were witnesses. Whole parishes, carried away by the power of the truth and by the noble example of brave men who sacrificed every thing for the cause of God, declared openly for the Reformation. At Bartfeld, Michael Radaschin had preached the Gospel with so much power that all the force of Rome seemed to be destroyed there. In Transylvania many towns followed the example of Hermanstadt. The greater number of the inhabitants of Mediasch and Kronstadt, at the eastern extremity of the country, and of many other cities, declared that they were determined to believe nothing but [Sidenote: John Honter.] what is taught in the Word of God. The principal instrument of God in these districts was John Honter. After studying at Cracow and at Basel, he had returned into his native land, rich in knowledge, strengthened by faith, and inflamed with zeal. He had established there a printing-house, which was the first in Transylvania, as that of Uj-Sziget was the first in Hungary, and had published a multitude of school-books and evangelical books. It was not long before the whole of southern Transylvania, the country of the Saxons, was gained over to the Reformation. Honter himself at a later time published a narrative of these conquests.[578] The work, however, appears to have been less solidly done in these districts than in others. Transylvania was one of the few countries of the Reformation into which Socinianism penetrated as early as the sixteenth century.