By these proceedings the malcontents were silenced for the present, but the government felt that something more was needed for the restoration of order. At a time, when the religious movements occasioned new and unforseen expenses to the State, it could not abandon any of its former sources of revenue. Hence the tithe-question was clothed with special importance. All the tithes were not church-property; a part of them belonged to strangers, to whom the government was bound to give its protection, and to the same protection the church also had a claim, which was not done away, but only changed. Besides a mere declaration on the part of the government, that the tithe must be paid, nothing more was done. But conviction had to be wrought in the public mind, and to do this, again devolved on Zwingli. But before he laid the subject before the people, he endeavored to settle whatever was unstable and wavering in the opinions of the Great Council, so that the authorities might proceed the more firmly in their line of action. Still the belief prevailed among many of the members, that the tithe was purely a religious affair, and this position was strongly maintained by the Secretary, am Gruet, who, Bible in hand, met Zwingli with his own weapons. It is true, that here he could only appeal to the Old Testament, but this yet held too important a place in Zwingli's system of doctrines, to suffer the Reformer lightly to reject its authority for an isolated case. He showed, however, in a long and spirited debate with am Gruet, before the Great Council and a crowd of other hearers, that the Levitical priesthood, for whom the tithe had been introduced into the Old Testament, came to an end with the Gospel; and by this, according to his view, the question had been brought back from the sphere of religion into that of civil law. But neither am Gruet, on the one side, nor the Anabaptists on the other, were disposed to let him slip with so cheap a victory. Am Gruet would yield nothing, and in fact the following passage is found in the protocol of the Great Council, "that neither of the two contending parties has so triumphed that the other is obliged to yield, and that My Lords are not displeased with the warning and exposition of their Secretary, but think he has acted according to his duty and his oath." But the decisive battle, which now drew near, was first to be fought with the Anabaptists. During the interval, Zwingli prepared for the people a detailed exposition of the rights of the church and state to the tithe, which the government then used as a general and final decree for the disturbed districts. The scrupulous payment of the great tithe[4] for the future was also enjoined upon them in an earnest tone. In regard to the so-called little tithe, the government promised strict inquiry, the removal of abuses, and a diminution of it, as far as possible.