Page:Balthasar Hübmaier.djvu/137

 there. Fools along with us it appears are Nürnberg, Nördling, Augsburg, Ulm, Reutling, Konstanz, St. Gall, Appenzell, Zürich, Schaffhausen, Basel, Strassburg, Worms, Speier, Maintz, and almost the whole of the land of Saxony."

For what reason Hübmaier declined the invitation from Regensburg we can only conjecture. He probably was unwilling to leave the work at Waldshut in this crisis, and if he sought merely his own personal safety and comfort, there is nothing to show that he would have been more secure in preaching evangelical doctrine at Regensburg than at Waldshut. The former motive seems, from all the evidence we have, to have been controlling. The people of his town, the flock for whom he had come to have a strong affection, were loyal to him under circumstances of great trial; it was not for him to desert them.

The effort to dislodge him from the city increased in strength and persistence. On April 13th the Austrian Government addressed a letter to the council of Waldshut, in which it was said: "It is understood that your Doctor and preacher in all his sermons holds forth the Lutheran doctrines, praises