The popish cantons, enraged at the progress of the Reformation, and its near approach to their own gates, were eager to find some pretext for ridding themselves of the treaty of Cappel. This was not difficult to find. They had never really kept it. What was called in the treaty "liberty of conscience," or what was beginning to be called by the Protestants "the rights of conscience," the Catholics never acknowledged. They knew no distinction between religious and civil obedience. With this fundamental position of the Protestants, the Catholics never could for a moment agree. It necessarily became a principal matter of contention, and the source of innumerable local jealousies and controversies, which daily increased the irritation, and determined the mountaineers openly to violate the treaty.
The cup of Catholic indignation was at length full. Blood! blood! was the cry. Nothing but the blood of living Christians could atone for the destruction of the dumb idols; nothing but the burning piles of God's saints could answer for the ashes of their altars and images. Oh Rome! Rome! when wilt thou be satisfied with the blood of God's redeemed? Thy thirst is unquenchable. The oceans which thou hast shed have only inflamed it. On every possible occasion during thy usurped dominion we see thee thirsting for blood. But what will it be when thy reign is ended, and no more blood to shed? That awful word "remember" will throw thee back over the past and fill thee with visions of blood, visions of the dungeons of the Inquisition, and of the flames of thy innocent but helpless victims. Then all will be changed. Unmingled, unending blessedness, shall be their happy portion; but what of that place where the flames shall never be quenched, where the worm shall never die, where the visions of the past shall ceaselessly flit before thy sleepless restless soul, and where one drop of cold water shall never be procured to cool thy burning tongue? There we must leave thee to the fruitfulness of thy memory, the accusations of thy conscience, and the upbraidings of those whom thou didst deceive by thy sorceries, and drag down by thy delusions to those regions of endless woe.