that now no choice is left but to defend ourselves in a knightly fashion, or else to renounce God and His Word; and that it is the determination of the good city of Zurich to lose everything: state, goods, town, country, body and life, rather than abandon the truth she has professed. Each and every district ought to be commanded, in case any one is not willing thus seriously and honestly to stand by the Word of God, the city and the canton, to notify him in the beginning, that he must go off in three days under suitable conditions. But whoever has courage enough to pledge soul, honor, life and property to God's Word and the city of Zurich, to him shall be said that you have received such and such counsels, and that you yourselves act wholly for God, and will protect yourselves and Him from all harm." These counsels now follow. They furnish proofs of his knowledge of foreign and domestic relations as well as the arts of political life and stratagems of war. He afterward shows how they ought to conduct themselves toward the Emperor, France, other neighbors, every canton of the Confederacy, their allies and the common territories. He unfolds the advantages of striking the first blow, of surprises in war; he enters even into the nature and use of various kinds of weapons. But then, he concludes: "These crude and smoke-stained plans I have hastily brought together for the sake of certain violent and dishonest persons, who, beyond all propriety and in the teeth of the Federal Compact, threaten the good city of Zurich with war. Still, I have an undoubting hope that Almighty God will not let the pious people of the Confederacy suffer for the treachery of a few, nor permit us thus to sit in judgment on each other. I have prayed from the bottom of my heart, that he will defend his city in some other way than the one here pointed out, and cause the pious, common people to dwell peacefully together in one Confederacy." How deeply concerned he was in guiding the ship of state is clear from the fact, that in this same sketch he even designates the individuals, who might be safely entrusted with the command of the different batalions as well as with seats in the council of war, adding, it is true: "But a muster can hurt nobody." From such labors he hurried off to write letters to theologians, to study the Holy Scriptures, to mount the pulpit, to draw up ecclesiastical regulations and formulas of worship. Only such a man was able to carry out the Reformation in a free state. Instead of condemning him, we must keep this steadily in view, and be careful not to form our judgment according to the ideas of the nineteenth, but of the sixteenth century.