...they persecute me wrongfully;
Psalm 119:86
"Ulrich Zwingli --- council, according to an ancient custom, had called upon him to accompany the army as its chaplain. Zwingle did not hesitate.
Zwingle was at the post of danger, the helmet on his head, the sword hanging at his side, the battleaxe in his hand.
Scarcely had the action begun, when, stooping to console a dying man a stone hurled by the vigorous arm of a Waldstette struck him on the head and closed his lips.
Yet Zwingle arose, when two other blows, which hit him successively on the leg, threw him down again. Twice more he stands up; but a fourth time he receives a thrust from a lance, he staggers, and sinking beneath so many wounds, falls on his knees. Does not the darkness that is spreading around him announce a still thicker darkness that is about to cover the Church?
Zwingle turns away from such sad thoughts; once more he uplifts that head which had been so bold, and gazing with calm eye upon the trickling blood, exclaims: "What matters this misfortune? They may indeed kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul!" These were his last words. He had scarcely uttered them ere he fell backwards.
There,
under a tree, in a meadow,
he remained lying on his back,
with clasped hand, and eyes upturned to heaven.
--The shouts of the victors,
--the groans of the dying,
--those flickering torches borne from corpse to corpse;
--Zurich humbled,
--the cause of Reform lost— all cried aloud to him that God punishes His servants when they have recourse to the arm of man.
If the German reformer had been able to approach Zwingle at this solemn moment, and pronounce those oft-repeated, words, " Christians, fight not with sword and arquebuse, but with sufferings and with the cross," Zwingle would have stretched out his dying hand, and said, " Amen."
--Two of the soldiers who were prowling over the field of battle, having come near the reformer
Zwingle, without speaking, (for he had not strength,) made signs in the negative.
--"If you cannot speak," replied the soldiers, " at least think in thy heart of the Mother of God, and call upon the saints !" Zwingle again shook his head, and kept his eyes still fixed on heaven.
--Upon this the irritated soldiers began to curse him. " No doubt," said they, "you are one of the heretics of the city!"
--One of them, being curious to know who he was, stooped down and turned Zwingle's head in the direction of a fire that had been lighted near the spot. The soldier immediately let him fall to the ground. " I think," said he, surprised and amazed,—"I think it is Zwingle!"
--At this moment Captain Fockinger of Unterwalden, a veteran and a pensioner, drew near: he had heard the last words of the soldier. " Zwingle!" exclaimed he; "that vile heretic Zwingle! that rascal, that traitor!" Then raising his sword, he struck the dying Christian on the throat, exclaiming, in a violent passion, "Die, obstinate heretic!" Yielding under this last blow, the reformer gave up the ghost: -he was doomed to perish by the sword of a mercenary."
Reepicheep