1522). This same year, the question of Lenten observance began the Zwinglian Reformation. Some of Zwingli's followers did not share his willingness to wait for the action of the magistracy. The printer Froschauer and others ate meat publicly, in the presence of Leo Jud and Zwingli himself. They could justify themselves by his teaching that nothing not commanded by Scripture was binding upon Christians, and he undertook their defence. His sermon On the Choice or Freedom of Food was preached now (March 30, 1522) and afterwards printed, as were many of his sermons delivered about this time. He advocated freedom for the individual, upon whom lay the responsibility to act without scandal.
The civic authorities made a compromise: no distinction was drawn, they said, by the New Testament between kinds of food; but for the sake of peace the old rule should be kept until changed by authority, and the people's priests were to check the people from any breach of this ruling. The disregard of custom and authority shown by the decree and the act leading to it could not be overlooked; and the Bishop of Constance sent a commission, consisting of his Suffragan (Melchior Wattli) and two others, to settle the matter. The commissioners laid their views before the priests and the Smaller Council, and commanded them to observe existing customs (April 7, 1522). Before the Great Council Zwingli answered the Suffragan's arguments, and the debate really turned upon Church authority and custom as against individual freedom. At its close the Council repeated its old decree, pending a settlement by the Bishop of Constance, which they begged him to make according to the law of Christ. This was a practical abrogation of episcopal power, for the Bishop's standing was clear. The Zwinglian Reformation, therefore, begins as an ecclesiastical revolution, founded on action rather than doctrine, by which a city freed itself from outward control and organised itself afresh.
His learned friend Johann Faber, the Vicar-General of Constance, afterwards an Aulic Councillor and a leading ecclesiastic, had just returned from a visit to Rome (May, 1522) and thenceforth led the opposition against Zwingli. So early as 1519 the latter had marked him as one from whom, although a humanist, the Gospel had little to hope. Zwingli's literary work at this time recalls that of Wiclif in the years before his death; his Archeteles-a full statement of his position-was written in haste and appeared now (August 22, 1522). On reading it Erasmus begged him to be more cautious and to act with others; CEcolampadius also urged restraint. The same year (July 2) ten priests joined Zwingli in a petition to the Bishop to allow clerical marriage, wherein the wish for innovation was as distinct as the picture of existing morals was dark. There can be no doubt that the priests in Switzerland, owing partly to the disorganisation of episcopal rule and partly to the isolation of their parishes, had a low standard of life; of this there is
