At Augsburg (1533) the Lutheran lawyer, Conrad Hel, siding with his
Catholic-minded confrères Conrad Peutinger and Johann Rehlinger[978]
openly and courageously denied the Town-Councils any rights in the
matter. In 1534 Christoph Ehem, a patrician of Augsburg, who also held
Lutheran views, wrote a little work in which he demanded universal
and unconditional toleration and invited the Council to place some
“bridle and restraint” on the new preachers.[979] At that time (1536)
the Lutheran preacher Johann Forster protested very strongly against
Bucer, and refused to hear of the forcible suppression of Catholic
worship in Cathedral churches outside the jurisdiction of the civic
authorities; he appealed in this matter to Luther. Bucer just then
was bent on suppressing the Catholic worship with the help of the
magistrates. Forster was finally silenced by dint of “ranting, raging
and shouting” and was indignantly asked: “Whether he wished to
tolerate Popery and submit to such idolatry?”[980]
At Strasburg in 1528 the Protestant Town-Clerk, Peter Butz, set a
brave example by openly and severely condemning in the Council the
system of coercion planned by some of the preachers. Against the
intolerance towards sectarians advocated by Bucer, preachers and
scholars like Anton Engelbrecht, Wolfgang Schultheiss, Johann Sapidus
and Jacob Ziegler were not slow to protest,[981] though they had
nothing to say against the violent abolition of Catholic worship.
At Coire the preacher Johann Gantner came into conflict with Bullinger
on account of the coercive measures favoured by the latter; he
reproached the inhabitants of Zürich and Berne with having fallen
away from the freedom of the Evangel into the Mosaic bondage. Gantner
and others, in support of their protest, usually appealed against the
prevailing tendency to Sebastian Franck’s “Chronica,” published at
Strasburg in 1531.[982]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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