Adam Neuser

Neuser was born in Gunzenhausen and was a popular pastor and theologian in Heidelberg in the 1560s, serving at the Peterskirche and later the Heiliggeistkirche.

During the controversy over church discipline that developed in the late 1560s, Neuser became a leading member of the Antidisciplinist, and thus anti-Calvinist, faction led by Thomas Erastus.

I am firmly persuaded that my retreat from among the idolatrous Christians will engage many persons of consideration to embrace your belief and your religion, especially since many of the most learned and most considerable amongst them are herein of the same sentiments with me as I shall inform your majesty by word of mouth....Being promoted to the dignity of Preacher in the famous University of Heidelberg by the Elector Palatine who next to the Emperor is the most powerful prince in Germany, I began to weigh maturely within myself the divers dissensions and divisions of our Christian religion: for so many persons as there are amongst us there are so many opinions and sentiments.

I began with abstracting from all the Doctors and interpreters of the Scriptures who have wrote and taught since the days of the Prophet Jesus Christ.

Then I called upon God inwardly with the a most religious application and prayed him to show me the right way that I may not be in the danger to mislead myself and my hearers.