Blow upon blow followed in the battle thus commenced. While Oecolampadius was busy composing a reply to the treatise and its preface, by which he in particular had been assailed, Luther proceeded to follow up the attack. The same year he published a 'Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, against the Fanatics;' and in the following spring a larger work with the title 'A Proof that Christ's Words of Institution, "This is My Body," &c., still stand, against the Fanatics.' He concludes the latter with the wish, 'God grant that they may be converted to the truth; if not, that they may twist cords of vanity wherewith to catch themselves, and fall into my hands.' Just then, however, Zwingli had written against him, and to him, and the missive arrived at the moment when he had issued the last-named work. Zwingli wrote in Latin, entitling his tract, 'A Friendly Exposition of the matter concerning the Sacrament,' and sent it with a letter to Luther. These were followed almost immediately by a reply, in German, to Luther's Sermon, under the title of 'A Friendly Criticism of the Sermon of the Excellent Martin Luther against the Fanatics.' Zwingli had scarcely had Luther's last written work in his hands when he replied to it in a new treatise: 'A proof that Christ's words, "This is My Body which is given for you," will for all ages retain the ancient and only meaning, and that Martin Luther in his last book has neither taught nor proved his own and the Pope's meaning;' the title thus indicating that Luther's and the Pope's meaning were one and the same. Oecolampadius at the same time published 'A fair Reply' to Luther's work. These were the writings of the Sacramentarians which reached Luther during the troublous time of the plague at Wittenberg, and filled him with the pain of which we heard him then complain. Zwingli's doctrine, from the time of its first announcement, had seemed to Luther nothing but a visionary--nay, 'devilish' perversion of the truth and the Word of God. The progress of the controversy, so far from healing the difference between them, tended only to sharpen and intensify it. From the first hour the two Reformers met in opposition, the gulf was already fixed which henceforth divided Evangelical Protestantism into two separate Confessions and Church communities. This is not the place to pass judgment on the matter in controversy, or to trace minutely the leading points of dogma involved in the dispute. Regarding it, however, by the light of history, it must be acknowledged and avowed that this was no mere passionate quarrel about words alone or propositions of dogmatic and metaphysical interest, but devoid of any religious importance. Even in the attempts to establish points of detail, reference was constantly made, on both sides, to deep questions and views of Christian religion.