The relentless work of religious subversion bore everywhere a political stamp. The leaders were simply tools of the Court. Frequently they were at variance amongst themselves in matters of theology, and their people, too, were dragged into the controversy. To the magistrates it was left to decide such differences unless indeed some dictatorial official forestalled them, as was the case when the Vogt of Herrenberg took it into his own hands to settle a matter of faith. In the struggles between Lutherans and Zwinglians, the highest court of appeal above the town-Councillors and the officials was the Ducal Chancery. Ulrich himself did not explicitly side either with the Confession of Augsburg or with the “_Confessio Tetrapolitana_,” viz. with the more Zwinglian form of faith agreed upon at the Diet of Augsburg by the four South-German townships of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen and Lindau. The preachers who assembled in 1537 at the so-called Idols-meeting of Urach, to discuss the question of the veneration of images which had given rise to serious dissensions amongst them, appealed to Ulrich. Blaurer inveighed against the use of images as idolatrous. Brenz declared that their removal in Würtemberg would be tantamount to a condemnation of the Lutheran Church in Saxony and elsewhere where they were permitted. The Court, to which the majority of the theologians appealed, ordered the removal of all images on Jan. 20, 1540. Distressing scenes were witnessed in many places when the images and pictures in the churches, which were not only prized by the people, but were also, many of them, of great artistic value,[642] were broken and torn to pieces in spite of the warning issued by the authorities against their violent destruction. The “_Tetrapolitana_” had already forcibly denounced the use of images. At Ulm, which so far had refused to accept the “_Tetrapolitana_,” the magistrates in 1544 decided to adhere to the Confession of Augsburg and the “_Apologia_.” Blaurer, some years before (1541), had justifiably complained of the arbitrary action of the civic authorities and said that every town acted according to its own ideas. But the preachers were frequently so exorbitant in the material demands they made on behalf of themselves and their families that the Town Council of Ulm declared, they behaved as though “each one had the right to receive a full saucepan every day.”[643] In place of any amendment of the many moral disorders already prevailing, still greater moral corruption became the rule among the people of Würtemberg, as is attested by Myconius the Zwinglian in 1539, and thirty years later by the Chancellor of the University of Tübingen, Jacob Andreæ.