Summary Of Hoffman's Letter To Strassburg

All of this, said Hoffman, was about to begin, for this summer (of 1533) was to witness the initiation of the persecution of the rebaptized, a persecution that would serve to unite all of Hoffman’s covenant-brothers [bontbroederen]. Because of their actions, the persecutors would themselves experience a baptism of blood because the city of Straßburg would be the first to be placed under siege. What is more, the city would be captured or destroyed along with its many horrendous, seditious, and false prophecies that had already in part been exposed. Straßburg’s time had run out. These, his prophecies, Hoffman had told Bucer, meant as much to him as did those of Isaiah and Jeremiah, or any other of God’s prophets.
What is striking about
For, in 1525, the reformer wrote Hoffman a letter of accreditation, and as late as may 1528 in his letters to Wilhelm Pravest and the mayor of Kiel, Paul Henge, Luther spoke almost kindly of him, hoping only that he might moderate his apocalyptic rhetoric. To the crown prince of Denmark he wrote in a similar vein on 24 July 1528: “I hope, however,” he said, “that all things are going well in the lands of Your Highness, especially as concerns the gospel, even though such matters cannot move forward without opposition since Satan does not sleep. I wish especially that Melchior Hoffman proceeds with moderation; indeed, I would not complain were he to refrain from preaching [altogether] until he has been better instructed in such [apocalyptic?] matters.” But moderation was the one thing Hoffman lacked. For he appears to have become convinced somewhere along the way that he possessed the Holy Spirit, and in such a manner as to make his interpretation of the Bible and his predictions infallible. Whereas Luther, as Karl Holl pointed out some time ago, argued that one “must possess the Holy Spirit in order to understand the Word,” and Zwingli could assert more personally at the First Zurich Disputation of January 1523 that God had desired, by “means of the inspiration and revelation of the Holy Spirit to speak through me,” these statements had to do basically