Balthasar Hubmor, and his Wife

In the time of Zwinglius there was also one Balthasar Hubmor of Friedberg, whom the papists called a doctor of the Holy Scriptures, a learned and eloquent man. He was first a teacher and preacher at Ingolstadt, and later came to Reinsburg, where he preached powerfully against the Jews and their usury. Through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit the abomination of popery was made plain to him, and because of this he, according to the counsel of God, separated from it. Afterwards he rejected, together with other errors, the self-invented infant baptism, and taught with all his might the baptism of believers, as Christ commanded. But since the eyes of this dark world cannot bear the clear light of the holy Gospel, and since in this way their false faith and evil works are testified against, the above-mentioned Balthasar Hubmor, together with many others, was hated and persecuted by the world. After many temptations, expulsions and imprisonments, he came to Nichlasburg, in Moravia. Afterwards they arrested him and his wife, and brought them to Vienna, in Austria, where, after many trials and long imprisonment, he was burned to ashes, suffering it with great steadfastness, and his wife was drowned; and so both steadfastly confirmed with their death the faith which they had received from God. Ephesians 2, verse 8.

Read also Sebastian Franck, on the Roman Heretics, letter B.

NOTE. This Balthasar Hubmor published a small book, in which he complains of Zwinglius and his followers. He writes that they brought it about that at one time twenty persons, men, pregnant women, widows, and young girls, were miserably cast into a dark tower, and this sentence was passed upon them, that they should never again in their lifetime see either sun or moon, and should end their last days on bread and water; so that they all, dead and alive, should remain and decay together in the dark tower, until none should be left alive.

Thus some did not taste a morsel of bread for three days, in order that the others might have something to sustain their lives.

"O God," he further writes, "what a terrible, severe, and harsh sentence against pious Christian people, of whom no one could say anything evil, except that they, according to the command of Christ, had received water baptism!"

O sad deformation, we say, of the so-called Reformed! May the Lord forgive them and be gracious to their blindly zealous souls. See the complaint of Balthasar Hubmor, against Zwinglius, throughout; also, the Preface to the Oferboeck, in the year 1615, letter I, and so on; also, Chron. van den Ondergang, and so on, page 1031, column 2.