We are not aware that the name of Peter Gunther has ever before been enrolled in the catalogue of Unitarian martyrs. We conceive, however, that he is worthy of a not undistinguished position on that venerated list. That he was a conscientious believer in the sole Deity of the Father, and that he suffered death in consequence, is plain from the terms of Dr. Petersen's [Professor University of Rostock] narrative; and if his belief was to some extent an ignorant one, or not founded on a broad basis of theological knowledge, it is all the more to the honour of the poor blacksmith that he withstood the threats and solicitations of his educated persecutors.
"A remarkable occurrence also took place in the neighbourhood of Lubeck in respect of a journeyman locksmith, named Peter Gunther, a native of Prussia, whom I would gladly have rescued from imprisonment and death, had it been in my power. At first, this man, like most of his class, had been very rude, and had borne a part in all the excesses of his fellows. But he afterwards changed, and would no longer associate in their vice and unruly living, and travelled to Dantzig, and obtained work in a Jesuit monastery, where they persuaded him that they were called Jesuits because they were a Society in Jesus. But because he saw evil doings among them, he gets some scruples about Jesus, and goes away from thence, and falls into the company of a Socinian locksmith, who tells him how the Jesuits had made Christ into a God, which he by no means was, a doctrine which he assented to,— and at last went so far as to begin to doubt if ever there had been a Christ at all. Upon this he travels to Wismar, and thence to Lubeck, where in his workshop in which he laboured at his trade he sees one clear noon a pillar of fire in the air, and above the same a beautiful bright star, from which he concludes that there was but one God, whom he had actually before his eyes, and no more; from which time forth also he refused to go drinking with his club. His fellow-workmen dispute with him respecting Christ, to whom he answers, 'that it was the rascally Jesuits who had made him into a God.' They lodge a complaint against him with the authorities, and rouse up the clergy. He was put into prison, and the opinion of the Universities was asked as to his condemnation and sentence. The University of Kiel answered, that according to the word of God a blasphemer was to suffer death; but that whether this man had blasphemed God or no, remained to be investigated. But Wittenberg replied that he was a blasphemer, because he had been baptized, and had blasphemed Christ in whose name he had been baptized. According to this sentence, he was executed by order of the city of Lubeck. But before this came to pass, I travelled with my dearest wife to Lubeck, and with her visited this poor man in prison, and would willingly have brought him back to the knowledge of Christ, and thought he might possibly have imagined, in his former faith, that there were three Gods, which indeed he, as we thought, had expressed in presence of the Actuarius and another person, and said to us, 'When I believed in three Gods, then was I godless; but since I have believed in only one God, I have feared him.' I said to him, that there was but one God, and that Father, Son and Holy Ghost were the only God, and that the beautiful bright star which in his workshop he had seen above the burning pillar, was the Son of God, whom God had been pleased thus to reveal to him. He should read, too, while in captivity Johann Arnd's 'Garden of Paradise,' wherein divers prayers are addressed to Christ. Whereupon he was silent, and at last said, 'Ah! there is nevertheless none but the only God: he is the One and the All.' "When the Actuarius heard these words, particularly when he said that if Christ were God, he did pray to him,—he said, that if the man had thus explained himself before, he had never been cast into prison. I went to the Burgomaster Kerchring, and related all this to him; and he ordered him a better cell and clean linen. I was rejoicing in the hope of effecting the poor man's release, and he himself offered to remove to a distance from Lubeck; but the clergy had so preached against him from the pulpits, and so stirred up the civil authorities, that he was thereupon executed, which greatly troubled me and my dearest wife, as we did not look upon him as a blasphemer, because he had never aforetime rightly recognized Christ as his God, but had believed in three Gods. A blasphemer, i.e. one who blasphemes the God whom he recognizes as his God, the Old Testament commands us to slay; but not such an one, as above mentioned, who had gone astray in regard to Christ, and might of a certainty have been brought back by us to the truth, since his heart yearned to us, and he heard willingly what we told him of Christ, the God-man. Nevertheless, now that they have violently cut off his days, we leave him to the mercy of God, who will have mercy upon him! This happened in 1687, some time about the month of October. I have also written a letter to Herr D. Pomeresch, then Syndic of the city of Lubeck, which may be seen in Gottfried Arnold's History of the Church and Heretics, Vol. II. pp. 484, 485, wherein, among other circumstances, it is shewn how maliciously his drunken companions, in their ignorance, bore witness against the aforesaid Peter Gunther, who as he knelt down to receive his death exclaimed, 'Oh, thou eternal and true light, have mercy upon me!'"—Pp. 66—70. [We need hardly say that our knowledge of Peter Gunther is confined within the limits of the foregoing extract. We have in vain endeavoured to find the work to which Dr. Petersen refers, in such theological libraries as are within our reach; and the kindness of a friend in searching the City Library of Hamburg, was also fruitlessly exercised. If any reader of the Christian Reformer should possess the work or be able to obtain access to it, he would confer a great favour on the writer by communicating with the Editor.]
It is impossible to read this simple story without loving the goodness of heart which so elevated Dr. Petersen above the persecutors of Lubeck, or admiring the steadfastness of Gunther in preferring death to recantation. We may put down to the harmless self-esteem of our author the declaration, that a little further argument might have brought the unhappy martyr to a sense of his error; for it is by no means borne out by his dying declaration. The charge of blasphemy, too, was manifestly untrue. In the parallel case of Servetus it had an apparent foundation. But the lapse of a hundred years is often enough to change blasphemy into the milder offence of heresy; and another century sometimes transmutes the heresy into orthodoxy. We know nothing of the present state of Protestantism in Lubeck; but if that city have not stood aloof from the general march of theological opinion in Germany, it is possible enough that the very pulpits from which poor Gunther was calumniated to death, may be occupied by men who hold the doctrine for which he died. Let not his name lack henceforth its due share of honour!
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