In a polemic against the new sect entitled _In Catabaptistarum Strophas Elenchus_, [Sidenote: July 1527] Zwingli's only argument is a criticism of some inconsistencies in the Anabaptists' biblicism; his final appeal is to force.

His strife with them was harder than his battle with Rome.

It seems that the reformer fears no one so much as him who carries the reformer's own principles to lengths that the originator disapproves.

Zwingli saw in the fearless fanatics men prepared to act in political and social matters as he had done in ecclesiastical affairs; he dreaded anarchy or, at least, subversion of the polity he preferred, and, like all the other men of his age, he branded heresy as rebellion and punished it as crime.
[Sidenote: Theocracy] By this time Zurich had become a theocracy of the same tyrannical type as that later made famous by {156} Geneva.

Zwingli took the position of an Old Testament prophet, subordinating state to church.