The main charge, however, was directed against his moral conduct. Not merely gloomy hypocrites, habitual fault-finders, who took offence at every joke, to which his gay humor may have prompted him, and condemned his love of music and society, but unprejudiced, worthy men also regretted that his attentions to the women were not always kept within proper bounds. It were idle to deny, what he himself openly confessed, when he bewailed the errors of his youth and strove to do them away by redoubled zeal and faithfulness to duty. Some excuse may be found for him in the customs of his age. The failings of superiors were then treated with indulgence, and a transgression of this kind received but a mild sentence at the bar of public opinion. His honorable dismissal from Glarus, given to him only with reluctance, shows, also, that in spite of occasional short-comings, his character was held in general esteem. Certainly Catholic writers, since then and even in modern times, have sought to cast a stain on his later work by laying undue stress on this weakness of the Reformer's youth.[7] The simple question may be put to them, 'Are not Augustine and Jerome counted among your most distinguished saints? And yet you know, or ought to know, what they have confessed--things that Zwingli had never to renounce.' He was now past his thirty-first year, and in the full vigor of manhood. His national sympathies, the extent of his knowledge, his courage and ability were well known to the inhabitants of Glarus and to many also beyond the limits of the little Canton. As to matters of faith the struggle was yet going on in his own bosom. Here, on the one hand, stood the Church, to whose priesthood he had been consecrated, with her stiff, unbending dogmas, and her stale, lifeless forms, yet esteemed holy, to touch which was regarded as an unpardonable crime in the individual; and there, on the other, eternal truth, superior to the narrow restrictions of human power, raised above decretals and the decisions of Councils, drawing to herself all noble spirits with an irresistible charm, of all objects the most worthy of pursuit and untiring effort--and besides these a third, easily overlooked by the inexperienced youth--by the thinker in his quiet chamber, but not by the practical man, who must mingle directly with the people--the necessity of a higher, a more infallible authority than his own, an authority acceptable to all good men and acknowledged by all. It was well for him that he knew how to connect this with the results of his investigation. Not by ignoring the understanding, not by a cowardly retreat, where others ventured freely to inquire, not by an assent, that feared to ask for proof, lest one should cry out, "Wo to the heretic!"--No! but by boldly examining for himself and using his reason, he only arrived at the more settled conviction of the truth of the Holy Scripture and of the divine power of the faith built thereon.