History of the Anabaptists Part 4

Lesson Transcript

Well, good evening, everyone. Glad to have you all here. Um, I hope that the rescheduling didn't confuse or mess up some people's plans. But this evening we're going to be looking at the lesson 4 of the history of the believer baptizers in Europe, 1500 to 1650, and we're going to be looking at South German and Austrian believers, 1526 to 1550. One of the things I think that we have to keep in mind about early Anabaptism is that it was a grassroots movement.

Uh, that was not necessarily the case of the other, uh, the Protestant reformers. Uh, normally th-those, um, reforms were led by clergy, um, by, um, educated persons who were already in church leadership and so on, and they often, uh, had the backing or at least sought the backing of whatever government, uh, prince, uh, city, uh, that they were part of. And along with that went a kind of an imposed, um, reformation. Now, it w it was not necessarily easy.

There was conflict, um, there were negotiations and so on like that. But there is no one with the early Anabaptists, there's no one person in charge. And so, um, and, and also the key one of the things you want to keep in mind is that the, the Lutheran Reformation and Zwing what Zwingli was doing and what was happening elsewhere in Europe, uh, in the earliest days of the Reformation had an impact on people, uh, and various places.

And so, um, some Anabaptists had been reading Luther's writings, and some had been reading Karlstadt, some had been reading Zwingli. Some had been influenced by what Thomas Müntzer was doing, and so on. And so they bring a whole set of, of ideas and things that they've been thinking about and, and talking about and so on, and it's not always the same every place and every time, okay? So my point is that at the from the very get-go, there is variety, okay?

And the reason I'm saying that is because we're going to be looking at South German and Austrian believers, and there's a fair amount of variety here. And but I, I think you'll be interested to know the to see then where how that pans itself out. Okay. One example of that is Balthasar Hobbmeyer. Now, we've encountered him before. He had been a reformer at Walshout.

Uh, he started out as a Catholic priest there, and then he became a, a more of a Protestant reformer, very much, uh, connected to what Zwingli was doing in Zurich. He was somewhat similarly minded to that. But then, um, he, he was coming to some conclusions about, um, baptism. Uh, he, he accepted Zwingli's understanding of the Lord's Supper, that it was a meal of remembrance. But, um, he also, uh, was he had been at some of the Zurich disputations, encountered some of the persons who later became Anabaptists.

And so in 1525, in, in I think it's March of 1525, he, um, one of the Swiss, uh, Anabaptists come up, and he accepts baptism from that pr him. I can't remember what his name, which one that is right now. And then, uh, proceeded to, to preach and to baptize, uh, starting in March of, of 1525. However, um, Walshout was an imperial-free city, and there-there's all these there are these cities within the empire that are self-governing, and they are normally governed by a city council, okay? And they're not large.

I mean, they're not large territories. But sometimes they're very important territories because they're centers of trade. Oftentimes, in some cases, there are universities there and so on. And but, uh, being part of the empire, okay, being part of the empire, the Austrian overlords do not want either Protestantism, and they certainly don't want Anabaptism to take root. And so an Austrian army moves against Walshout, and, um, uh, Hobbmeyer flees Walshout, okay?

And he goes down to Zurich, um, but he's already, um he is already practicing believers' baptism. And though he had sort of been a colleague or an ally of Zwingli now with, uh, having gone, uh, to the Anabaptists, uh, he is, um he's imprisoned there, uh, he's tortured, and he's forced to recant, okay? He's forced to say, "I'm giving up believers' baptism." I don't think he really meant it. I think he just gave in to the pain.

That's one of the other things that, you know, we think about, uh you think about, you know, if you read The Martyr's Mirror, you know what The Martyr's Mirror is. It's the story of those who endured. It's not the story of those who didn't, all right? And so their stories are often left they're left out. Um, now, uh, Hobbmeyer is in The Martyr's Mirror, okay, because there were some persons who recanted under the pressure of torture who later on, uh, uh, as the authorities would look at it, relapsed.

They went back to Anabaptism. We're back to probably what they really believed. Um, and, you know, we can be hard on them. And certainly there were people who endured the pain and the suffering with great bravery and so on. But torture is very effective. It works. It gets you to say things that you don't really want to say, all right? So he passed through Augsburg, where there was a group of sacramentarians. These are people who hold to a Zwinglian understanding of, of, um, the Lord's Supper.

And most of actually, most of the people who are sacramentarians, there's some influence from Zurich, but it, it, it goes back to Karlstadt and his teaching. Karlstadt is a very influential, uh, person. His pamphlets were published. People were reading them and so on. And in Augsburg, which was nominally still Catholic, there were both there were persons, uh, uh, among the clergy who were advocating Lutheranism and clergy who were advocating Zwinglianism and clergy who were advocating Roman Catholicism.

So it's kind of a, a, a time when things are sort of up in the air. The Lutherans are in the ascendancy, okay? They're, they're kind of, um I mean, they eventually will gain control there. But they're in the empire, and they're another free city, all right? They're another free city. And one of the things you'll see, uh, in the in the Holy Roman Empire is that, um, pro there are these Protestant footholds, uh, in areas which surrounding are largely Roman Catholic, okay?

Um, and there he met Hans Denk, who was baptizing. Now, earlier scholarship, um, had jumped to the conclusion that Hobbmeyer had baptized, uh, Denk. Um, but there's really no proof about that. There's no indication. It's just sort of, well, they were there at the same time, uh, and when was Denk baptized? Well, who baptized Denk? And so some earlier scholars, uh, said it was it was Hobbmeyer. But Hobbmeyer and Denk were two differently minded persons, and we'll see that here in a little bit.

Um, Hobbmeyer did not actually like Denk. He didn't like what he was what he was thinking, what he was saying. And he arrived in Nicholsburg in Moravia, which is a Czech-speaking area, but it's actually under the control of the Austrian Archduke, uh, Ferdinand II. And, uh, came to the lands of Leonard von Liechtenstein, a Moravian nobleman. And he won the support of Leonard and the Nicholsburg clergy.

They, uh he actually won the church leadership, which, again, was, was nominally Roman Catholic but was reading, uh, Reformation literature and, and were thinking things. And Hobbmeyer won them over to believers' baptism. And they removed the images from the churches. They abolished the Catholic fast days. Um, and so they're using they're using these, uh, formerly Roman Catholic clergy for, uh, for believers' meetings, which is really interesting, okay? Um, they're in, in Liechtenstein.

In 1527, Hobbmeyer wrote his Treatise on the Sword. And unlike the Swiss brother and unlike Schleihheim, okay, um, he, uh, says that a ma a Christian can be a magistrate. He can exercise the authority of the sword. And that is a major difference between Hobbmeyer and the Swiss brother and between Hobbmeyer in the, um in the, um, uh in Schleihheim.

Um, in, in 1527, that during the same time that he's active there, because the, the, uh, Leonard, uh, uh, von Liechtenstein allowed, uh, uh, kind of carved out a space for Anabaptists to be, uh, it becomes a place where Anabaptist refugees come to. It becomes a refuge for them because in most other places they're being persecuted. So you even have some Swiss come over, but also folks from different parts of South Germany and Austria are, are coming there. And again, they're not all like-minded.

Uh, in fact, in May of 20 1527, Hans Hut arrives, uh, there in Nicholsburg, and he has a dispute with Hobbmeyer. Uh, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that at the next lecture because, um, that, that ties into the whole story about the Hutterites, okay? In fact, um, in these, these previous lectures, I've, I've kind of ignored a topic that has to the topic of community of goods, which is there from the very beginning, okay?

Uh, it's there with the Swiss brother and so on, uh, because I want to kind of tackle that whole subject with when we talk about the Hutterites. Um, all the early Anabaptists believed in community of goods. They all believed that Acts 2 and 4 was normative for the Christian communities. Now, the, the difference is that they didn't all understand it the way that later Jacob Hutter and the Hutterites understood it, but they did believe in, in community of goods.

And we'll talk a little bit later about why, um, um about that, okay? So I'm just going to kind of skip over that dispute there in 1527. Now, Hobbmeyer, while he was there in Liechtenstein, he wrote a catechism. And this was a, um, an instruction in Christian doctrine, um, in a question-and-answer format. So you have some, uh Leonard, of course, is probably, uh, a reference to, uh, Leonard of Liechtenstein, the, the lord who, uh, the territory.

He's this person asking the question, and Hans is the person giving the answer. And so this is just a part of the catechism that deals with baptism. And the reason I have it is because I have it here is because it gives a really good summary of Hobbmeyer's understanding of baptism, which is pretty much in line with, um, almost all the rest. Not quite everybody, but almost all the rest of the early Anabaptists. It certainly lines up with, with, um, how the Swiss brother understood baptism.

In fact, uh, not this, this catechism, but his writing on baptism was often other Anabaptists took, took that and reprinted it or kind of pulled chunks out of it and put it in newer writings and so on. Um, and it was considered to be, um, a, a very good explanation of believers' baptism. And so Leonard says, "Show me also a message of the Gospel." And Hans answers, "Christ died for the sake of our sins, arose for the sake of our justification." Leonard, what is faith?

Faith is the realization of the unspeakable mercy of God, which he bears to us through his most beloved Son, Jesus Christ, whom he delivered to death for our sakes, that sin might be paid for and we might be reconciled to him. Leonard, what is living faith? Hans, one that produces the fruit of the Spirit's Spirit and the works and works through love. What are the articles of faith? And Hans recites the Apostles' Creed.

One of the things that's very interesting is the Apostles' Creed, of course, was an ancient statement of faith. Uh, it was recited frequently in the Roman Catholic literature. And so it was it's sort of like the Lord's Prayer. Uh, everybody would have known that. Uh, and so he's, he's referring back to the to the Apostles' Creed. Um, and, and the Anabaptists early Anabaptists really did, uh, sometimes they refer to it as the 12 articles because they divided it into 12 statements, all right?

Um, after Leonard asks, "After faith, what do you desire?" Hans, water baptism. How many kinds of baptism are there? Hans answers, "Three kinds." Leonard, what are they? Hans answers, "A baptism of the Spirit, a baptism of water, and a baptism of blood." Leonard, what is the baptism of the Spirit? It is the inner illumination of our hearts that takes place by the Holy Spirit through the living Word of God. That is a standard early Anabaptist understanding of Spirit baptism.

They connect it very closely with conversion, okay? And so you have this inward the Spirit inwardly illuminates, uh, and changes you, okay? Um, and then what is water baptism? Now, notice here what he says, all right? Now, the early Anabaptists believed that the water did not do anything to you, all right? Um, they did not believe, like the Roman Catholics did, that it washed away took care of the problem of original sin.

They didn't believe, like, um, um, the, the like Zwingli, that it was simply, um, an it was a it, it, uh, brought you into a covenant relationship and, and so on with, uh, with the church. But this is what, um this, this statement is pretty much across the board. It is an outward and public testimony of the inner baptism in the Spirit. And they're very insistent. The inward baptism of the Spirit has to happen first, which a person gives by receiving water, with which one confesses one's sin before all the people.

One also testifies thereby that one believes in the forgiveness of his sins through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Thereupon, one also has himself outwardly enrolled by water baptism incorporated into the fellowship of the church. So what is water baptism? It is a testimony, and it is also the enroll the means by which one is enrolled into the visible church, okay? So it's not it is a symbol, but it's not only a symbol, okay? It's a testimony. It's a declaration. It's a public witness.

And it's also the way in which one is outwardly enrolled into the visible fellowship of the church. Leonard asks, "What is the baptism of blood?" And he says, "It is a daily mortification of the flesh until death," okay? So that is the self-denial. That is, um, saying no to sin, to what your flesh desires. And it's a daily mortification. Now, we're going to see then, okay? We're going to see then here in South German, uh, Anabaptism how that is always there, okay? That idea is always there.

But it the idea of, of, of the baptism of blood takes on additional significance and as and being identified with martyrdom, with actually dying for, uh, for their faith, okay? Now, Hobbmeyer, um, in 1528 I mean, 1527, he's arrested and sent to Vienna. Ferdinand II, who's the Archduke of Austria, he is the brother, the younger brother of Charles V, who's the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

Charles gave to his brother that was, uh, the, the Archduchy of Austria actually belonged to Charles, but he gave it to his brother because he spent most of his time in Spain. So he gave the Archduchy of Austria to him. That included, um, the Tyrol. Uh, that included it's a much larger area now. And then also, he was the ruler of Moravia and Bohemia, which were Czech-speaking lands, okay? And so he became the ra uh, ruler of, of Moravia.

And in typical Habsburg fashion, he clamped down on any kind of descent, whether it was Protestant or whether it was Anabaptist. But he was they, uh Anabaptism was particularly, uh, a subject of his art. And, uh, uh, and he is unrelenting. He is unrelenting. In 5th in July 1527, Hobbmeyer is arrested. Um, the Leonard of Liechtenstein was not able to prevent that. I mean, he was up against, um, his overlord and so on. He was not able to prevent that.

And after almost a year, uh, in prison, during which he was tortured and interrogated and tried and badgered, uh, interestingly enough, uh, one of his, his chief interrogators was, was Johann Eck, who was also the person that, uh, Luther, uh, debated at Leipzig in 1519 and who was in many ways the pit bull of, of the Roman Catholic Church when it came to heretics, all right? Uh, he yeah. Who had been the ruler before Ferdinand II was given this? Charles. Oh. Charles.

It was, uh when Maxim when their grandfather, Maximilian, died, okay? Charles inherited it inherited inherited the Austrian lands. He inherited the Netherlands and so on. And through his mother, okay? Through his through his mother, he inherited the, the he inherited Spain, okay? So he was more lenient than Leonard von Liechtenstein to give the privileges. He was more lenient than Ferdinand. Is that what you're saying? Oh. Leonard von Liechtenstein, uh, was baptized as a believer, okay?

He was able to give some relief to people who. For a very, very short period of time. Because Charles was the ruler rather than. No, it has not quite that not quite that. It's, it's about the time that see, Moravia is, is a separate, uh, a separate territory. And he becomes king of, uh he becomes the king of Bohemia and Moravia, okay? And that, I think that I'm not sure. That might be an elective position. I, I don't want to say for sure.

Um, but once he came once he got in control of Moravia, uh, he clamped down on it. And, um, so he was burned at the stake, and his wife was drowned three days later, all right? Now, let's look at Hans Dink, all right? I think John said that the last time I forgot to say I had Hobbmeyer, Dink, and Hutt up there, and I forgot to say much about them. And so I'm going I'm actually going to talk about them today because this is really what I want to. Hans Dink is a very young man, born around 1500.

So in the 1520s, he's in his 20s. He, uh, attended the universities of Ingolstadt and Basel, and he was fluent in Latin, Greek, which wasn't uncommon, but he was also fluent in Hebrew, which was a little bit more uncommon. He read Karlstadt, and he was influenced by Karlstadt, and he became a sacramentarian. Now, being a sacramentarian is kind of a sort of something that you can hold inside your heart and not talk too much about or not let people know.

So you might participate in the in the Lord's Supper in a Catholic church or community but have this mental reservation, "Well, I'm not really eating the blood and, um, eating the blood drinking the blood and eating the body of Christ. This is just done in memory." And but and that's why, um that's why the, um sacrament I mean, they did clamp down and the, the, the Austrians did clamp down on sacramentarians too and, and so on. But it's a little easier to hide, okay? It's a little easier to hide that.

Um, he was also influenced by German mysticism. This is, uh, a medieval German mysticism. There were a whole group of German mystics in the in the, uh, 14th and 15th century who really focused on, uh, sort of a very per a personal relationship with God, a indwelling with God, uh, becoming God-like. Um, and it's, um and they emphasized, um, that most of them, um, thought Luther's faith alone, um, idea one of the criticisms that Dink had was it didn't produce godliness.

And that's, of course, a critique that Anabaptism has. But the Spirit of there's a group of, uh there's a group that rises kind of alongside of Anabaptism and also some Anabaptism Anabapt early Anabaptists move into that called spiritualism where, um, they, they emphasize inwardness and, and so on. And they also emphasize holy living, okay? And a growth in holiness, all right? Uh, so both, you know, uh, emphasizing personal communion with God and an inward and outward renewal and a growth in holiness.

But in some cases, when it comes to what is church, that's a, a different question, all right? Uh, in many cases, they were simply thought it was okay to conform to whichever church was in your territory. Well, Hans Dink Hans Dink, I would say, his mindset and his, his kind of leanings are toward spiritualism because when you read his writings, they're very much they're very much, um, focused on this inward renewal and outward holiness. You know, we have this we have one of his quotes out here.

"He is not my favorite Anabaptist. I would have chosen a different quote, but that was done before I was around." And people it's a really nice tag, you know? How's it go, John? Do you remember? No man can know Christ except by following him in life. That's right. Yeah. By the way, that wasn't my quote. Oh, well, I know. I know. I know, okay? But I mean, it's true. It's true. You know, it's true. But a spiritualist could say that as well as an Anabaptist, all right? Okay.

Now, um, so, uh, he got a job as a schoolmaster in the city of Nuremberg, again, which is one of these free imperial cities. But he's kicked out of the city for his radical views in January 1525. And he runs he wanders around and spends some time in St. Gallen in Switzerland where he might have been and had encountered, uh, believers, um, and been baptized as a believer. We don't really know when and where exactly he was but that's a guess, okay?

Since people have dismissed that Hobbmeyer, uh, baptized him, their next best guess is that it was may have been when he was in St. Gallen because he certainly would have encountered been able to encounter, um, believers there. But is it certain that he was baptized? Uh, there is no documentation about his baptism. Um, I mean, that's, um and, and September 1525, he goes to Augsburg. And again, Augsburg is one of these free imperial cities.

And it is in the midst of, um it's in the midst of, of trying to decide which way they're going. Like I said, the Lutherans kind of ha are in the driver's seat, but there's some conflict about that. And there are these sacramentarians there who are, in a sense, kind of ripe for somebody like Dink to come along. And he begins baptizing people, okay? Well, I mean, I would think that you probably were baptized if you are starting to baptize people as believers.

Um, I think that's a fairly maybe you could make that assumption. I, I think that would not be too hard to think. He's there from September 1525 to March 1526. Uh, and like I said, the city is kind of divided between Lutheran and Zwingli parties. And he begins baptizing. And the, the believers are gathering informally in groups. In fact, one of the things that's interesting, their enemies refer to them as garden brothers because they're not meeting in the churches. They're meeting in their houses.

They're meeting in, in gardens, which are like conclosed areas with a garden behind a house or something like that. Um, so they sort of derogatorily call them garden brothers. Um, he doesn't stay around, okay? Uh, in November of, of, um, 1526, he goes to Strasbourg. And Strasbourg, again, is one of these oh, that's, um by the way, that's just that is a, a map from the 16th century showing kind of a bird's eye view of the city of Augsburg.

And it's a walled city like many of the cities in the 16th century Europe were. And then this is a, a similar picture of the city of Strasbourg. City of Strasbourg is in the Rhineland. Again, it's a free imperial city. Interestingly enough, it's now in France, okay? But then it was German-speaking. And, um, the between about 1515-23 to about 1533, for about a 10-year period, um, they're moving toward, uh, toward a into toward a Protestant reform.

Um, but Bousser, um, Wolfgang Martin Bousser and Wolfgang Capito are the two reformers who are who are kind of overseeing and kind of directing the reform there in Strasbourg. And they are they are listening to Luther, and they're also listening to Zurich and Zwingli. And they kind of come to a medium, uh, a medium kind of position. Uh, in fact, um, I think it's Martin Bousser who tries to get Luther and Zwingli together in 1530 to kind of come to some kind of agreement about what does the Lord's Supper mean.

And, um, it didn't really work too well. But they, they are they are by n they seem to be by nature the two of them seem to be by nature kind of mediating mediators who, um, are trying to give some space give some space and so on. And so all of a sudden, okay?

All of a sudden, what happens is Anabaptists who are being persecuted elsewhere, spiritualists, and any other odd duck I don't mean Anabaptists were odd ducks, but there were some odd ducks, some rather peculiar sort of souls who show up there in Strasbourg, including, uh no, I don't think Michael Sattler was an odd duck, but he was there. Hans Dink comes there, okay? Melchor Rink is there. These are all already Anabaptists. And then Pilgrim Marpack makes his way there, okay?

And then there are people like Caspar Schwankfeld, who is a spiritualist, okay? There are persons like and also Sebastian Frank is also a spiritualist. And then there are some people who have prophecies, okay? Like Ursula Joost, who, um, uh Melchor Hoffman, uh, was paying attention to, uh, the visions and prophecies that she had. And of course, Melchor Hoffman was there also.

So there's a period of time simply because Capito and Bousser hadn't really nailed down what was going to be the well, how the Reformation was going to go. It was kind of a, a, a space there for people to come. And Dink is there. He only lasts for two months, okay? Um, Capito and Bousser liked Michael Sattler. Um, in fact, after he was martyred in, in, um, 1527, I think it's Capito who writes about him that he was a godly man but mistaken about baptism, all right?

Uh, he did not have such favorable things to say about Hans Dink. He thought Hans Dink was a dangerous person, okay? All right. So he goes he's there for a few months, and then he has to he does have to leave. They make him leave, all right, because they don't want him in the city. And then he heads up to Worms. And there, he joins forces with Ludwig Hetzler, who was present in Zurich in 1525. And he was part of that little band of young men who were challenging Zwingli.

But interestingly enough, he did not get rebaptized at that particular point. He also goes to Augsburg. And Dink was probably there at the same time. And, um, and we again, we have no record of when he was baptized or where he was baptized and so on. But we there is reference to the fact that he was baptizing. And again, so we can draw the conclusion, "Well, if he was baptizing, he probably was baptized." But they go to the city of Worms, which is another one of these free imperial cities.

And there, Hetzler and Dink, in cooperation with the Jewish community in Worms, translates the prophets into German, the Hebrew prophets, into German. And it's the first translation of the Hebrew prophets into German, okay? Luther had not finished that yet. Zwingli's translation of the prophets didn't come out till 1529. And but the, the Hetzler, uh, Dink translation came out in 1527. And it was numerously reprinted. It was reprinted a number of times.

The picture I have up there is actually a 1528, um, um, printing of it, okay? And Zwingli Zwingli, um, did refer to it. Now, he made his own translation, but he did they did refer to it when they were working on the Froschard translation. Martin Luther did not he, he looked at it. He says, "Actually, the plot was a fairly decent translation, but because there was the Jews helped him helped them do it, he wouldn't have anything to do with it.

He was very anti-Semitic, um, okay?" So it's during this period of time that both Hetzler and Dink seem to be moving away from Anabaptism, kind of abandoning it. And, um, and Dink is wandering post the pillar and so on. And finally, he reaches out to Oca Lampatius, the Protestant reformer at Basel. And Oca Lampatius allows him to come to Basel. And he has Dink write a recantation, which is an interesting document because it he doesn't doesn't give up much.

But it was enough, I guess, that Oca Lampatius thought he could take it. But then he got the he died of the plague, uh, shortly. He wasn't there very long before he died. And that's Oca Lampatius up there in the corner. And that's a picture of the city of Basel. Okay. Let's then look at Hans Huth, all right? He is an itinerant book peddler. He's a follower of Thomas Münster. He was involved in the in the, uh, Peasants' War.

Uh, and from Münster, he picked up this apocalyptic, uh, framework and emphasis on the end times. There was this feeling. And, you know, historians in more recent years have, have, have, um, pointed out the fact that everybody thought the world was going to come to an end. Luther thought the world was going to come to an end and that the judgment was going to be soon because of the tumult and upheaval and everything. I mean, they read the Book of Revelation, and it seemed like, "Oh, it's happening now," all right?

But, uh, it was very it was a very pronounced thing with Thomas Münster. He thought God Jesus was coming back again, and he would right all wrongs and put the nobles in their place and give the common people their place. And there would be justice, uh, and, and, uh, blessing for everybody. Um, he also tapped into German mysticism, this real focus on in on inwardness, on, um and also on on holy living.

But, uh and, and from, from Münster, he who all who in Karlstadt had this too, this term Gelassenheit, okay, which we sometimes is translated as yieldedness, okay? And along with that, he had this idea of the gospels of all creatures, which he took, uh, from Paul's letter, where it talks about even the creation, groans, and so on. And, um, Hutz said that just like men take animals and use them, you know, kill them, cut them up, and so on for nourishment, okay?

And the and the animals have to yield themselves up to this and accept it and so on. So men need to yield themselves up to God for them to for God to, in a sense, kill them, to destroy the wickedness, destroy the sin, and so on. And so there needs to be this renunciation, this yieldedness up to God's will. And that he referred to as the gospel of all creatures. Well, the failure of the of the peasant uprisings in 1525 and 1526 led Hutz to conclude it was not God's will, all right, that it was a mistake.

And he wandered around as a bookseller. He was going from one city to another place and so on. He came to Augsburg in 1526. And on Pentecost, Hans Dink baptized him. And so he becomes a believer, um, in in believers' baptism. And he not only became a believer, but he became an evangelist. And he traveled throughout South Germany, Austria, Moravia, preaching and baptizing.

And this is where his apocalyptic emphasis, his emphasis on the end time comes in because he saw his mission as to get out there and to to baptize the 144,000. And I think he thought that after we get them baptized, that's when Jesus is going to come back. And it's interesting because up to this time, um, there is one reference to immersion baptism in, I think, St. Gallen and so on. There was a man who wanted to be, uh, immersed, and they did it. But most Anabaptists, uh, practiced effusion. They did by pouring.

But he would dip his fingers in water, and then he would make the sign of the taw, the mark of the taw, the seal of the Spirit on the person. And this was that was the again, kind of going back to the to the imagery in, in, uh, Revelation where where the saints are sealed, um, with the mark of the of the Spirit, okay? Um, and he predicted that the world would come to an end in 1528, all right? Um, he returned to Augsburg in the spring of 1527. He baptized additional converts.

And then in August, August 20th, 1527, the, um he participated in what, uh, historians have since referred to as the Martyrs' Senate. That's not what they called it, but that's what historians now call it. And Anabaptist leaders from different parts there in South Germany came to Augsburg and met together. And they were planning basically an evangelizing strategy.

And from that, they people were going to be various persons were going to be sent out to various places throughout southern Germany and so on, and into Moravia, into the Tyrol, and so on, and even up into the Rhineland, okay, and, uh, preaching, baptizing, and gathering, uh, believers into congregations. Well, the authorities got wind of this. And this really worked I mean, when it after happened, it really upset them. It really concerned them.

And so in September, they cracked down on the believers and rounded them up, interrogated them. And by this time, the Lutherans are pretty much in the driver's seat. And they, um and so they give people the chance. They give them the opportunity to recant. And so if they recant, you know, they'll, um they'll let them go, all right? If they don't recant, um and if they're if, uh if, if they don't recant, then they're going to put them in prison. And in some cases, they kick people out of the city, all right?

And but Hans Huth, they put him in prison along with some other major leaders, all right? And, um, he is imprisoned. And he dies during an attempted prison break. Uh, fire was set. There was some debate about that. The Martyrs' Mirror, uh, the count in the Martyrs' Mirror, which is based on the Hattarian Chronicle, uh, attributes the fire to the carelessness of a jailer.

Uh, some uh another report says that it was something that that Hans Hutz set to kind of cause a cause a disturbance and so on that he could escape. But it didn't happen. He actually suffocated to death. Um, they took his body and burned it later on, you know? So they're, you know he got burnt one way or the other. But he's very important, even with some of his I think what we would admittedly say are some strange ideas. He is a very important figure.

Um, the spread of believers' baptism in South Central Europe, um you see the Swiss Confederation, Zurich there, St. Gall, Appenzell, Walsh, Hutz, Schaffhausen, Schleifheim. That's kind of where it is. But it's also going there's Augsburg up there. And they're going over to Moravia. They're going up further north. And it's going down into Tyrol. By the 1520s it's interesting. By the end of the 1520s, it's really fairly widespread, okay?

Now, two very important leaders, Leonard Scheimer and Hans Schlaffer, were actually persons that Hans Huth baptized. Both of them were ex-Catholic priests. And they, um, uh Leonard Scheimer had been at Nicholsburg when Hutz and Habmeyer debated. And he, uh, he he thought Habmeyer I mean, Hutz had the better end of the argument. He was baptized by Hutz in, um, in Nicholsburg there. He then participated in the Martyrs' Senate in 1527. He went down into into the Tyrol. Let's just go back. He went down into the Tyrol.

And there, he was captured at, um, Ratenburg and was executed by fire in January 1528. Again, this is an area that is controlled by the Archduke Ferdinand II. And he is very vigorous and insistent on, on, uh not only insisted on executing them but using burning at the stake as the main means of execution, which is a really nasty way to go. Hans Schlaffer, um, is a Catholic priest. Um, he had kind of moved in in an evangelical, Lutheran kind of way by 1526. He also is baptized by Hutz.

And he is also martyred there in Ratenburg in January 1528. Now, these two men, in a sense, were disciples of Hans Hutz. But they were not, uh, completely disciples of Hans Hutz. In fact, at the Martyrs' Senate, uh, the the the leaders, the evangelists who were gathered there, who were going out, they told Hutz that he had to stop preaching the 144,000. And they also had to stop doing this thing of predicting. He said, "If somebody asks you what you think, you can tell them.

But it's not supposed to be part of your message," all right? So, uh, they did not necessarily agree with that. Again, that's part and parcel of fact. These people had been thinking about things. They had been reading the scriptures. They had come to some conclusions. And they weren't necessarily going to buy everything that Hans Hutz said, all right?

But one of the things that is kind of a move in the in the whole understanding of baptism by blood, these two men sort of, um, uh sort of develop that it's not only this inward renunciation and, you know, uh, um, you know, denial of the flesh and so on, but it also the baptism by blood is also the external suffering leading to martyrdom and that that experience is part and parcel of cleansing the soul, all right? And so that might be why some of them were really quite willing to be martyred.

I don't think they enjoyed it. But they also, uh, picking up from Hutz and from German mysticism, um, said that there was a divine spirit in man that could respond. And this lies the groundwork for their understanding of the fact that, uh, salvation is available to everyone and that man has a free will because there's something inside of man that can respond to God and move in the right direction. They also picked up on Hutz's idea of the gospels of all creatures.

And here's a quote from Leonard Scheimer, uh, about the, um, the, uh, gospel of all creatures. "God created all creatures in five days for the reason that they might be of use to man when he was created on the sixth day. And precisely the same means whereby all creatures become useful to men are God's way with man, that is, through suffering, by which man kills, cuts, and prepares, and the creature submits to man and suffers for faith's sake.

And just as the animal is of no nutritious value to man unless it dies, so no man can become blessed unless he dies for Christ's sake." Okay? So there you have that kind of inward focus, you know, self-denial, um, crucifying the flesh. But you also have this thing that kind of moves into an understanding that suffering, external suffering for one's faith, being persecuted and so on, is also part of of the thing. And both Scheimer and, and, um, and, uh, Schlaffer are are executed at Ratenburg.

This is a, a, um, ball. This is a wood carving of Ratenburg in the 15th century, kind of a curious sort of thing. But it's kind of an interesting image. There's somebody else at Ratenburg. But I'll come to that thing. They weren't the only people who were captured and killed. These are two there are two accounts in there's more than that.

But two accounts in the Martyrs' Mirror that Jan Leichen illustrated that take place in this area, a burning of 18 persons at Salzburg in 1528 and then the beheading of seven brothers at Schwabisch Gummen in 1529. And there's actually an Osborn hymn about that. So there is, uh, in which it's a ballad in which, um, it's written in in as kind of an account from the persons who were who were martyred there. But an important person, um, who's also at Ratenburg is Pilgrim Marpeck.

Now, he is born at Ratenburg around 1495 into a wealthy burger class. The burgers were the the governing I mean, they had citizenship. Um, they had a say in the government. His father was a mining magistrate in Ratenburg in the Tyrol. And the Ratenburg is in the Tyrol. So he's Tyrolese. Um, and between 1525 and 1528, he is the mining Pilgrim Marpeck is the mining magistrate. That means he oversees. He's kind of like an engineer, actually, okay?

He's an engineer that also has some, um, some official authority and so on, um, uh, over the miners and over the the mining operation and so on. And he was one over to evangelical reform through, uh, Jacob Strauss and Stephen Kassenberg, um, uh, persons there in Ratenburg who were leaning toward reform. And again, we're here in a situation where Ratenburg is an imperial city. But as he looked at the reformers, at the evangelicals, he thought that they gave they allowed too much fleshly freedom.

And this is a continuous this is a constant critique, okay? This is a constant critique of persons who become Anabaptist, particularly if they have gone the way of going from Roman Catholicism through Lutheranism or Zwinglianism into Anabaptism is, you know, we were there. We saw how these folks lived. They're yeah, they're reforming things. But there's really no change in how people live. People are still living wicked lives.

In fact, they see the evangelical Protestant idea by grace alone is just kind of, uh, making way for that, all right? And when Scheimer was was martyred in January 1528, um, Marpeck resigned and probably around that time, uh, united with Anabaptism. And he went to Austerlitz in Moravia, where he was appointed an elder.

And probably around that time, he wrote a book, a little booklet, a little tract called, um, The Offdecken the Babylonian Heron, um, the the unveiling or the revealing of the Anabaptist I mean, of the Babylonian, uh, harlot. And in that, he talks about about government. And he really does see government at this particular point as being part of the beasts, being part of the Babylonian whore. And this is the, uh this is an illustration or a, uh, of the type from the title page of that particular tract.

Uh, it also advocates community of goods. And again, I'll talk about that later on. But it's also very pretty clear about the fact that believers do not pick up the sword. They do not kill. They do not murder and so on. Um, but he goes to Strasbourg in the summer of 1528. And he may have actually been sent there, um, by the, um, by the, uh, Austerlitz brethren. And in Strasbourg, he lives there from 1528, uh, through 1532.

And he, uh, leads one of the groups one of the one of the groups of of of Anabaptists there in in Switzerland in in Strasbourg. And he also encounters persons who were Anabaptists but were actually moving into a spiritualist direction. And he sees that direction as being very dangerous and just also wrong.

In fact, um, through much of the rest of his life, in addition to pastoring and giving leadership to a circle of of churches and congregations there in Southeast Germany and so on, um, he he carries on a number of debates with spiritualists, particularly with Caspar Schwenckfeld. And we'll talk about that here in a minute. Uh, he wanders through Switzerland and Moravia between 1533 and 15 oh, he is, uh, eventually Bousser and Capitot. Um, by 1532, they kind of know which direction they're going.

By 1533, it's pretty well set. And the dissenters who were there before that kind of have to leave, all right? Um, or they're imprisoned. And, um, they they they like Marpeck as a person and so on. But they believe he's very mistaken, particularly when it comes to believers' baptism. One of the things that's very interesting, though, is that Bousser and Capitot, when they actually did implement their reforms, they had a provision for church discipline.

And they got that through their conversations with the various particularly with Sattler then with Marpeck and so on like that, yeah. Didn't they also, uh, initiate the idea of a confirmation later on? And some people thought they got that. I think you're right there. Yeah, I think that's right, yeah. Back to Scheimer. I think he was beheaded, not burned. And some people think, uh, because, uh, Marpeck left the city of, uh. Okay. I'll have to check that and see.

That he perhaps influenced that more merciful execution. Yeah. Yeah. You you you probably are right there. I'll have to check that and see, okay? Because other people were burned. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'll check. And if I need to correct that the next time, I'll do that, okay? Um, so he wanders through Switzerland and Moravia for about 10, 11 years. And finally, he goes back to Augsburg. And it's interesting because by this time, Augsburg is Lutheran. But he has a skill which is highly in demand.

And so that skill kind of carves him out of space there to live in Augsburg in 1544 till he dies. That that 1566 is wrong. That should be 1556. I must have hit the wrong letter when I was doing that. So he died around in 1556. Marpeck, um, wrote some really significant stuff. Um, and actually, I think I'm going to advance this and come back to this, uh, one here. Um, but but again, as I said, his his his main people that he's debating with are the spiritualists and particularly Caspar Schwenckfeld.

Caspar Schwenckfeld was a Silesian nobleman. And he believed, uh I mean, he was a spiritualist. He did believe that the church had fallen and so on. But he he thought that for the church to be restored, that they that God had to perform miracles or one had or there had to be visions and signs given by which, uh, which indicated that the church was supposed to be restored and purified. And so in the meantime, you just stand still, okay, and focus on your inward life and living a holy life, okay?

That all the almost all the spiritualists did emphasize the fact that you should live a holy life, okay? It's just that, um, where they stood about where the church was or what one should do about that and, of course, the ordinances. In fact, um, Schwenckfeld didn't really think that baptism and the Lord's Supper were all that important. You know, what was really important was inward baptism, inward, uh, inward fellowship or communion with God.

And you could, you know, wherever you were, you could just kind of conform to what was happening there. And he also, um, developed this idea of the celestial flesh of Christ. And that was the idea that Jesus did not get his physical body, um, from that Mary had nothing to do with that, that it came down from heaven. That's where the term celestial comes from. And that, um, Mary was simply the receptacle of of that. Um, Melker Hoffmann was in was in Strasbourg at the same time that Schwenckfeld was there.

And I guess in their conversations wherever, uh, he was impacted by that and adopted that doctrine. And when he became an Anabaptist, he brought it into into Anabaptism. And of course, later on, the Dutch Anabaptist because he's the one who goes up in the Netherlands first, uh, preaching and baptizing and gathering, uh, people, uh, that is an idea that carries down through, uh, Dutch Anabaptism like with Menno Simons and Dirk Phillips and most of the rest of the of the, um, Dutch Anabaptist, okay?

But this idea of standing still, okay? And so he, uh, um, Marpeck writes a book advocating believers' baptism and the Lord's Supper and a disciplined church. And Schwenckfeld writes this lengthy, lengthy response to it. And then Marpeck writes a lengthy response to it. And they go back and forth on this whole thing. And in that those things, um, this, uh, um, Marpeck talks about the difference between the the Old and the New Testament.

And this is a very, I think, a pretty Anabaptist understanding of the two covenants. The Old covenant is merely a covenant of promise. It's the prediction of God's pointing forward to a new being in Christ Jesus. For in Christ Jesus, all things, consciousness, feeling, and the heart of the believing man have been made new. What was only promised in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the humanity of Christ. And that's a very important concept for Marpeck. He really emphasized the humanity of Christ, okay?

All this happened in the fullness of time. And he he that may have also been kind of a stab or a dig against against, um, against, uh, Schwenckfeld's celestial flesh doctrine, okay? All this happened in the fullness of time. And all the creatures of God waited for it. There is a little bit echo of the of of of, you know, of, um, all creatures that Hutt has and Schleimer and Schlaffer have too.

Um, no man received it until the spirit of the comfort of conscience was given unto the remission of sin until the gifts and teachings and guidance into all truth was given unto the regeneration. And one of the things we want to keep in mind is that the Anabaptists are really the only group other than the spiritualist, okay, who talked about the new birth, okay, during this period of time, all right? And then you okay. So that's the idea of regeneration. Now, oh, I spelled emphasis wrong there.

I didn't have my wife proofread this. Um, this is a quote from a letter that he wrote to his congregation in 1545. And it was, uh, titled On the Humanity of Christ, all right? And he says, "The flesh is of a creaturely nature that is taken up into and entered into the Godhead. And the Godhead is united in one essence in the flesh as the true word became flesh, which is then the truth and the life itself." So he is arguing here that Jesus' flesh was real flesh, okay?

It was it was, uh he got his flesh from Mary and so on. He was truly, uh, a man who was in the flesh, all right? "To the flesh, body, and blood I ascribe all the honors which the Father has ascribed to him that I reasonably honor him as much as the Father. Yes, I also grant him all judgment which was committed to him by the Father for the very reason that he is the Son of Man. He will be a judge.

And not for the reason he is also the Son of God, one essence in the Father." And that one essence is a Father is a very nice seeing kind of language there, okay? But you see what he's saying there. He said, "Jesus is going to be the judge." Why? Because he's a man, okay? Not because he's the Son of God but because he's a man. I'm not sure if I agree with that. But it's a nice idea. You think about that and see what he's trying to, all right?

"The spirit of the Father and the Son are judges apart from and prior to that. The transfer of power which took place took place for the sake of the humanity of Christ that it might be honored like the Father as essentially true Son of God and of man. He, the man, Jesus Christ, who alone accomplished in believers the good pleasure of the Father, he, the Lord, a true Son of Man, is Lord, ruler, leader, and director of all his saints," okay?

Now, the other thing that Marpeck talked about, um, when he's talking about the scriptures, one of the phrases he uses, "It is the greatest created thing," the scriptures. But it is it's a it's a creation of God, all right? It's the word of God. But the scriptures are created. Um, another idea that Marpeck had was that the perfection of the saints, okay, where it talks about into a perfect man, uh, where Paul talks about that, um, that that is not referring to an individual.

That's referring to the church as a body, as a group. That it's only in the it's only in the body of Christ, his physical presence here on Earth, where all the gifts are operating and everything is fitly joined and together that the perfection of of Christ can really be worked out and lived out. As individuals, we can't express that because we need the whole body to be able to do that, which I think is kind of a nice idea. All right. In closing, one of the things I talked about was, you know, we have this variety.

It's a grassroots level. There are some of these ideas that come in. Some of them, kind of like Hutt's apocalypse, predicting and so on, fall by the wayside. And the other thing that's happening is that there's there are there are Swiss, uh, Anabaptists who are moving into the area. Um, uh, George Blaurock is moving into the Tyrol in 1529 and, uh, evangelizes and so on. Very it's not going active very long. But he's caught. And he's executed. I think he was burnt, um, and so on. I think he was burnt.

Um, George Blaurock was, yeah. So, um, and so there's so and of course, the other thing you have, uh, earlier scholarship had kind of made this sharp demarcation between Pilgrim Marpeck and the Swiss Brethren primarily because, uh, Marpeck wrote some letters to the Swiss Brethren, scolding them for what he thought that they were being too legalistic and so on. And so, uh, I think more of that has been made than not. And, um, I would probably think that the Swiss Brethren weren't being you know what a legalist is.

That's somebody who thinks, "I shouldn't do something that I think I should be able to do." Um, you know, it's, um, it often tells you more about the person who's levying the charge than, uh, the people that they're levying it against. But, uh, Arnold Snyder, in his Sources of South German Austrian Anabaptism, which is a source book, um, gives us a nice summary. And I would say this is what this is what South German Swiss Anabaptism, Austrian Anabaptism is like even though there's some differences, okay, still.

Um, Marpeck, later on, some of his writings were incorporated in Swiss Brethren writings and so on. Some of his ideas were some of Hubmeyer's ideas were also. In fact, there's one manuscript, uh, from the 1590s that incorporates sections from Hubmeyer's writing on baptism and also some of Marpeck's writings and kind of, uh, blended together, um, as well as Schleidheim and so on. But this is what Snyder says.

I would say this is roughly true, particularly of Swiss and South German Austrian Anabaptism, even, uh, the Hutterites, which we'll talk about the next time. There, the Anabaptism's obvious common teaching was their uniform opposition to infant baptism and that their insistence that baptism be reserved for adults following a sincere confession of faith.

Among other emphases visible to the historian are the celebration of a memorial Lord's Supper as opposed to maintaining a real presence of Christ in the elements, belief in the freedom of the human will as a result of God's grace, the conviction that saving faith is a result of the Holy Spirit's activity in the heart and must include the fruits of discipleship and obedience as a result of God's grace not by human effort alone, a practice of fraternal admonition or discipline among members, and a concern for

economic sharing and solidarity with the believing community as a visible evidence of one's faith in Christ.

At the as the movement matured over the course of the 16th century, more points of consensus emerged among the baptizers, for example, that not that no oaths were to be sworn and only yes and no were to be used and that the believers were to live without recourse to weapons. Now, both of those are there pretty early on. Uh, we saw in even in the Grebel Circle's letter to Münster that clearly there's a statement of non-resistance. We see that in Schleidheim.

Hutt, interestingly enough, believed that in between the time during the time he was preaching and so on until the coming of Christ that the that the believers were not to resort to the sword and so on. But then he believed that when Jesus come back again that the 144,000 would be involved in judgment, uh, and and and, um, and vengeance and so on. So it's kind of a provisional, um, uh, non-resistance, okay? All right. So thank you for your attention. Uh, we'll pick up there next, um, next month.

And we'll be looking at the Hutterites, okay? Any any questions?