The time was ripe for his great work. Boldness only was needed, to give the first utterance to that of which the majority were more or less conscious: The deceit, the abuses that have poisoned our civil as well as our religious life must be put down. In such moments, the feeling of deliverance was awakened in every heart: nobler powers, intellectual activities were stirred up; but mingled at the same time with hereditary weakness, seductive vices and passions, whose charms he, who is born of earth, can not wholly resist; and the brave man, who called the movement into life, had soon to contend less with old enemies, already half conquered, than with the new ones rising up on all sides. This was the prospect which unfolded itself to the Reformer, as early as the year 1523, soon after the first Religious Conference. William Rœubli, the above-mentioned preacher at Wytikon, Simon Stumpf, pastor at Hœngg, and even Zwingli's former scholar, friend and admirer, Conrad Grebel, are known as the first by whom the congregations were disturbed and seduced into dangerous measures. Among several points, based on the Gospel as they pretended, none was more readily seized on by the people than these--that the tithe, according to the Divine Word, should go exclusively to the benefit of the poor, and that the taking of interest for money loaned was forbidden. In fact, deputies from several congregations in the neighborhood of the city appeared before the Council, on June 22d, with the petition, that, since the tithe was eleemosynary under the Gospel, and theirs was uselessly squandered by the canons of the Great Minster, they might be released from the burden. They were plainly rebuked by the Council in a scaled letter. It was not right in the government to support error. But the flame was not in the least smothered by this act; the bait was too tempting---to free themselves, under the shield of religion, from a tax, which often before had been resisted. Rude sermons, for and against the justice of the thing, were multiplied. A book, called "Chief Articles of Christian doctrine against unchristian Usury," written by a Doctor Strauss, and another, entitled "Balaam's Little Ass," were circulated. It was also asserted that Zwingli rejected tithes and interest. Grebel even ventured to write to his brother-in-law, Vadianus, in St. Gall: "You wish for news about the tithe-business. I can say nothing in accordance with sincerity and the Gospel, if I do not say, that the people in our world of Zurich defraud in this matter like tyrants and Turks. 'People of this world' I style the tyrants of our fatherland, who go by the name of 'the assembled fathers,' Decimating fathers they ought to be called. Thou art not perhaps willing to believe me, and yet T see it with my own eyes. _Only ask Zwingli, who can tell thee everything better than I can._"