Thus war seemed inevitable. All things were tending to an open and immediate rupture. The men of the mountains became violent. In order to defend the religion of their fathers, and to exclude the new doctrines from their subjects, they began to fine, imprison, torture, and put to death the professors of the Reformed faith. One of these cases, however, was so atrocious, that it roused the feelings of mankind, and speedily brought matters to a crisis.
James Keyser, a pastor of the canton of Zurich, and a father of a family, was making his way on Saturday, 22nd May, to Oberkirk, in the parish of Gaster, where he was to preach on the Sunday. When quietly and confidently walking along a woody part of the road, which he had often gone before, he was suddenly seized by six men, posted there to surprise him, and carry him off to Schweitz. He was brought before the magistrates, tried, and condemned to be burnt alive, on no other pretense than that he was an evangelical minister. The remonstrance of Zurich, to whose territory he belonged, was treated with derision, and the barbarous sentence was carried into execution. When first the pious man heard his sentence, he burst into tears; but before the hour of his martyrdom arrived, the grace of God had so revived his courage, and filled him with joy, that he walked cheerfully to the stake, fully confessed his faith, and thanked the Lord Jesus in the midst of the flames, even to his latest breath, that He had counted him worthy to die for the gospel. "Go," said one of the Schweitz magistrates, with a sarcastic smile, to the Zurich deputies, "Go, and tell them at Zurich how he thanks us!" This was a defiant challenge to the men of Zurich, and so they understood it.