But the actual outbreak of disturbances was occasioned by Brœdlein. A year before, whilst pastor at Quarten, in the bailiwick of Sargan, he had made himself conspicuous. With Rœubli he was among the first of the clergy, who violated the rules of fasting and the vow of celibacy. He had done both in the assurance of evangelical right and Christian liberty; and when the _landvogt_ spoke to him about it, he made answer not in the most courtly terms: The _landvogt_ ought to punish the lewd and adulterous persons who swarm in his neighborhood, instead of him and his virtuous wife. He was bound rather to protect him, and compel the other clergy to marry. The special sanctity of the priesthood was at an end. If one steals, then you should hang him, even though he would anoint his whole body with oil. The tale-bearers had lied about him like rogues. "Still"--he concluded in a tone somewhat more moderate--"I build my hopes not on men of this world. That much you ought to know of me. God has numbered all the hairs of my head, and not a sparrow falls to the ground without His will, so neither can any one injure me or my wife, if it be not His will, and therefore, dear _landvogt_, you need send neither thirty nor a hundred men to fetch her. If she has sinned against God, then send the smallest child, and she must come. But if you wish to take, or cause her to be taken from me by force, then know, that you act against God, divine righteousness and the Gospel. Yet I will not repel force by force. I once indeed thought it necessary to do this; but God has commanded me otherwise, and hence I may not teach it to my brethren." In fact, the _landvogt_, at the requisition of the ruling cantons, threw him into prison. How he escaped is not known. After the Religious Conferences in Zurich we find him as assistant at Zollikon, and here he seems to have been the first to introduce into Switzerland the doctrines of the Anabaptists, which elsewhere had caused so much dissension. Of all, who sought by means of these doctrines to create discord, to make a show or found a party, we can say, that, without exception, they were men of narrow minds, or, in worse cases, hypocrites with dishonorable private aims. Though it cannot be denied, that in later times respectable men have lived in our country under the name of Anabaptists, and are even yet to be found, still their moral worth springs not from their otherwise innocent mode of baptism, but from their religious exercises, their simple way of living, and the good examples, which they have before their eyes. Yet here also we durst not forget, that it is not the part of history to examine articles of faith, but to keep to events and the external phenomena of life.