As soon as he pointed out some of them, the anger of the monks was aroused. "Heretic!" exclaimed they, "apostate! you deserve to be thrown into a dungeon for the rest of your days!" They excluded him from public prayers. But the danger from without was still greater. Eck and his party had not relinquished their projects. "In three days," he was told, "they will be here to arrest you." He went to the brethren and said, "Will you give me up to assassins?" The monks were silent and undetermined; they neither wished to save nor to destroy him. At this moment some friends of Œcolampadius arrived near the cloister with horses to carry him to a place of safety. On being informed of this, the monks resolved to allow the departure of a brother who had brought trouble into their convent. "Farewell," said he, and was free. He had remained nearly two years in the cloister of Saint Bridget. Œcolampadius was saved; at last he began to breathe. "I have sacrificed the monk," wrote he to a friend, "and have regained the Christian." But his flight from the convent and his heretical writings were known everywhere, and everywhere people shrunk back at his approach. He knew not what would become of him, when, in the spring of 1522, Sickingen offered him an asylum, which he accepted. [Sidenote: ŒCOLAMPADIUS AT EBERNBURG AND BASLE.] His mind, oppressed by monastic servitude, took a new flight in the midst of the noble warriors of Ebernburg. "Christ is our liberty," exclaimed he, "and death, which men consider their greatest misfortune, is a real gain to us." He directly began reading the Gospels and Epistles in German to the people. "As soon as these trumpets sound," said he, "the walls of Jericho will fall down." Thus, in a fortress on the banks of the Rhine, and in the midst of illiterate warriors, the most humble man of his age was preparing for that change of worship which Christianity was shortly to undergo. But Ebernburg was too confined for him, and he felt the need of other society than these armed men. The bookseller Cratander invited him to Basle; Sickingen allowed him to depart, and Œcolampadius, delighted at the thought of seeing his old friends again, arrived in that city on the 16th of November 1522. After having lived there some time, simply as a man of learning without any public occupation, he was nominated curate of Saint Martin's church, and it was this call to an humble and obscure employment[553] that possibly decided the Reformation of Basle. An immense crowd filled the church whenever Œcolampadius went into the pulpit.[554] At the same time the public lectures delivered by himself and Pellican were crowned with such success that even Erasmus was forced to exclaim, "Œcolampadius triumphs."[555] [553] Meis sumtibus non sine contemptu et invidia. Œcol. ad Pirekh. de Eucharistia. [554] Das er kein Predigt thate, er hatte ein mächtig Volk darinn, says his contemporary Peter Ryf. Wirtz. v. 350.