the University, contradicted by none of his colleagues,[8] it came to be looked upon in a certain measure as a confession of faith on the part of the faculty. At the same time, also,Œcolampadius, to the great annoyance of his adversaries, succeeded in obtaining the introduction of church-singing in German; for the government, in accordance with the feeble advice of Erasmus, in answer to the question as to how it should act amid the zeal for innovation breaking out on all sides, adopted vacillating measures; to-day it suffered the departure of individual monks and nuns from their cloisters; to-morrow, in order to make such cases less frequent, it denied the rights of citizenship to those who had gone out, and rendered the practice of any worldly calling difficult; now it ratified episcopal laws, and then arbitrarily abolished festival-days; in one church it supported the celebration of the mass, in another allowed it to be abolished, so that Basel was as good as given up by the Five Cantons. They refused the Council there permission to examine the acts of the Religious Conference at Baden before their publication, and on the 13th of July, 1526, resolved, in connection with Freiburg and Solothurn, to keep the oath of confederation as little with Basel as with Zurich and St. Gall. So determined were the Five Cantons, especially since the Conference at Baden, only to acknowledge in the future those of their Confederate-sisters as such, who would adhere along with them to the former doctrines of the church. What authority they arrogated to themselves in this respect over the others, is plainly visible in their behavior toward Bern. Notwithstanding her repeated requests, the acts of the Baden Conference were not communicated to her; her conduct was subjected to severe censure, and it was resolved to send thither a delegation to confirm the alliance by an oath; but only after the Great Council and the consulting deputies of the districts had declared solemnly beforehand, that Bern would not desert the Five Cantons in matters of faith, yea, would even recall her former grant in favor of the free interpretation of the Scriptures. Indeed, she was obliged to draw up a sealed declaration to this effect. But with that even the Five Cantons were not satisfied. "A command"--so it is enjoined in the letters of their Conference at Luzern--"shall be given to our envoys at the swearing of the treaty as to what more shall be said to our Confederates at Bern, _which they shall indeed hear_." What this may have been will become intelligible to us, when we have taken a nearer view of the religious and political condition of Bern, as it then was.