In July, 1522, he addressed to the members of the Helvetic Confederation at large, a "Pious and Friendly Exhortation," "not to obstruct the preaching of the gospel, or discountenance the marriage of the clergy." "Fear nothing," he said to the heads of the cantons, "from granting us this liberty; there are certain signs by which everyone may know the truly evangelical preachers. He who, neglecting his own private interest, spares neither pains nor labor to cause the will of God to be known and revered, to bring back sinners to repentance, and give consolation to the afflicted, is undoubtedly in unison with Christ. But when you see teachers daily offering new saints to the veneration of the people, whose favor must be gained by offerings, and when the same teachers continually hold forth the extent of sacerdotal power, and the authority of the pope, you may believe that they think much more of their own profit, than of the care of the souls entrusted to them."
"If such men counsel you to put a stop to the preaching of the gospel by public decrees, shut your ears against their insinuations, and be certain that it is their aim to prevent any attacks from being made upon their benefices and honors; say that if this work cometh of men, it will perish of itself, but that if it cometh of God, in vain would all the powers of the earth league together against it."
After explaining the nature of the gospel, and showing that all salutary doctrine is to be drawn from the scriptures alone, he touches on the immorality that prevailed among the ecclesiastics as one great prejudice to the cause of Christianity; he pleads most earnestly against the prohibition of marriage to the clergy—proving that it is a modern device, for the purpose of aggrandizing the church, by breaking the ties which should attach the ministers of religion to the people, by rendering them strangers to the domestic affections, and thus concentrating all their zeal upon the interests of the particular body, or order, to which they belong, and the upholding of the papal system.
He addressed a similar remonstrance about the same time to the bishop of Constance; "in which," says Hess, "he conjured the bishop to put himself at the head of those who were laboring to accomplish a Reform in the church, and to permit to be demolished with precaution and prudence, what had been built up with temerity." These two petitions were signed by Zwingle and other ten of the most zealous advocates of the Reformation in Switzerland.
The exhortation, or mandate, of the bishop to the chapter of Zurich, drew forth from Zwingle another work which he called his "Archeteles," a word which signifies "the beginning and the end;" it was a summary of the main points at issue between the Reformers and their adversaries. "This work," says Gerder, "exhibits a true picture of the Zwinglian Reformation—very different from what it has been represented by many writers." It obtained more celebrity than his previous pamphlets, and was highly esteemed, not only in Switzerland, but in foreign countries, as proving the author to be "mighty in the scriptures," and one who united an intrepid courage with true Christian moderation. *
While these things were taking place in connection with Zurich, the bishop, now distrusting his own power to repress the growing dissensions, appealed to the national assembly held at Baden, and claimed the interference of the entire Helvetic body for the execution of his decrees. But the seeds of the Reformation were springing up there as strongly as at Zurich, at least among the pastors, for they had come to the unanimous resolution of preaching no doctrine which they could not prove from scripture. "This appeal of the bishop," says Waddington, "ended in the persecution of a single and humble delinquent." One Urban Wyss, pastor of Visisbach, in the County of Baden, boldly preached against the invocation of saints; he was seized and delivered over to the prelate; and a long imprisonment, which he endured at Constance, has distinguished him as the first of the Swiss Reformers who suffered for the truth's sake.