Zuinglius, at Glaris, might perhaps have remained a man of the world. Party intrigues, political questions, the empire, France, or the Duke of Milan, might have absorbed his whole life. Those whom God means to prepare for great services he never leaves amid the turmoil of the world. He leads them apart, and places them in a retreat where they commune with Him and their own consciences, and receive lessons never to be effaced. The Son of God himself, who in this was a type of the training given to his servants, spent forty days in the desert. It was time to remove Zuinglius from political movements, which, continually pressing upon his thoughts, might have banished the Spirit of God from them. It was time to train him for another stage than that on which courtiers, cabinets, and parties move, and where he should have wasted powers worthy of nobler employment. His country, indeed, needed something else. It was necessary that a new life should now come down from heaven, and that he who was to be the instrument in communicating it should unlearn worldly things, in order to learn things above. The two spheres are entirely distinct; a wide space separates these two worlds, and before passing entirely from the one to the other, Zuinglius was to sojourn for a time on neutral ground, in a kind of intermediate and preparatory state, to be there taught of God. God accordingly took him away from the factions of Glaris; and, with a view to this noviciate, placed him in the solitude of a hermitage--confining within the narrow walls of an abbey this noble germ of the Reformation, which was shortly after to be transplanted to a better soil, and cover the mountains with its shadow. CHAP. V. Meinrad of Hohenzollern--Our Lady of Einsidlen--Calling of Zuinglius--The Abbot--Geroldsek--Companionship in Study--The Bible copied--Zuinglius and Superstition--First Opposition to Error--Sensation--Hedio--Zuinglius and the Legates--The Honours of Rome--The Bishop of Constance--Samson and Indulgences--Stapfer--Charity of Zuinglius--His Friends.