a lawful manner, unrestricted by the apostolic constitutions and commands, or any other kind of impediment whatsoever. Then will you by aspiring after virtue advance from good to better, and become worthy of a still higher place in the presence of our Lord, the Pope and ourselves, and he himself, our Lord, the Pope, and we will thereby be moved to bestow on you more extensive favors and honors. The present document is dispatched to bear witness, and we have allowed it to be ratified by our seal appended thereto." "An official style," the scientific reader, who looks at this letter may exclaim; but the people, in whose ranks Zwingli ranged himself, understood and needed another kind of language. That which the Church granted to her pliant acolyte-chaplains--freedom from excommunication, the dwellers in the Alps had sometimes ventured to bestow upon themselves on their own authority in moments of power. The complicated sentences and the promises contained in them, in case of fidelity and submission, made, therefore, little impression upon the Reformer. How independent he was, in this respect, even at Einsiedeln, appears from his letter, of 1525, to Valentine Compar, former state-secretary in Uri. "Observe," says he, "dear Valentine, what I will yet publicly make known to the people, now living, that I, both before and since the schism arose, have discoursed and treated with distinguished cardinals, bishops and prelates concerning errors in doctrine, and warned them to begin the correction of abuses, or else they would be involved in greater trouble. Eight years ago at Einsiedeln and then at Zurich I often proved to the Lord Cardinal of Sion, that the whole Papacy rested on a rotten foundation, and this always by appealing to the Holy Scriptures. The noble Sir Diebold von Geroldseck, Master Francis Zink and Doctor Michael Sander, all three yet living are my witnesses; and the above-named Cardinal has frequently expressed himself to me in this way, 'If God restores me again to favor (for he was at that time in disgrace with the Pope), I would then willingly see the pride and falsehood of the Roman Bishop exposed and corrected.' And then, he has not seldom conversed with me about doctrine and the Holy Scripture, and every time would acknowledge the falsehood and his displeasure at it. But how he behaved afterwards, need not be told here."