Hoffman, having failed in the chapter, addressed a written request to the provost to prohibit Zuinglius from shaking the popular belief. The provost sent for the new preacher, and spoke to him with great kindness. But no human power could close his lips. On the 31st December, he wrote to the council of Glaris, that he entirely resigned the cure of souls which had hitherto been reserved for him, and gave himself wholly to Zurich, and to the work which God was preparing for him in this town. On Saturday, being new-year's-day, and also the birthday of Zuinglius, who had completed his thirty-fifth year, he mounted the pulpit of the cathedral. A great crowd, eager to see a man who had already acquired so much celebrity, and to hear this new gospel, of which every one began to speak, filled the church. "It is to Christ," said Zuinglius, "that I wish to conduct you; to Christ, the true source of salvation. His divine word is the only nourishment which I would give to your heart and life." Then he announced that to-morrow, the first Sunday of the year, he would begin to expound the gospel according to St. Matthew. Accordingly, the preacher, and a still larger audience than the day before, were at their posts. Zuinglius opened the gospel--the gospel which had so long been a sealed book--and read the first page, going over the history of the patriarchs and prophets mentioned in the first chapter of St. Matthew, and expounding it in such a way that all were astonished and delighted, and exclaimed, "We never heard anything like this."[705] [705] Dessgleichen wie jederman redt, nie gehört worden war. (B. Weise, a contemporary of Zuinglius. Füsslin Beyträge, iv, 86.) [Sidenote: THEIR EFFECTS.] He continued thus to expound St. Matthew, according to the original Greek. He showed how the whole Bible found at once its exposition and its application in the very nature of man. Delivering the loftiest truths of the gospel in simple language, his preaching reached all classes, the learned and the wise, as well as the ignorant and simple.[706] He extolled the infinite mercies of God the Father, and implored all his hearers to put their confidence in Jesus Christ alone as the only Saviour.[707] At the same time, he earnestly called them to repentance; forcibly attacked the errors which prevailed among the people; fearlessly rebuked luxury, intemperance, extravagance in dress, the oppression of the poor, idleness, foreign service, and foreign pensions. "In the pulpit," says one of his companions, "he spared no one, pope, emperor, kings, dukes, princes, lords, not even the confederates. All his energy, and all the joy of his heart were in God: accordingly he exhorted all the inhabitants of Zurich to put their confidence in Him only."[708] "Never was man heard to speak with so much authority," says Oswald Myconius, who with joy and high hopes watched the labours of his friend.