Ludwig Haetzer

By 1523 he was in Zürich, where he published, at first anonymously and in Latin (Judicium Dei), and later, on 24 September 1523, with his name and in German, a small tract against the religious use of images, and bearing the motto attached to all his subsequent works, O Got erlösz die (or dein) Gefangnen ("O God, set the prisoners free").

[2] Again resorting to Augsburg, and resuming work as corrector of the press for his printer Silvan Ottmar, he pushed his views to the extreme of rejecting all sacraments, reaching something like the mystical standpoint of the early Quakers.

He translated into German the first treatise of Oecolampadius on the Last Supper, and proceeding to Zürich in November, published his version there in February 1526, with a preface disclaiming connexion with the Anabaptists.

[3] At Strassburg in the late autumn of 1526 he fell in with Hans Denck (or Dengk), who collaborated with him in the production of his magnum opus, the translation of the Hebrew Prophets, Alle Propheten nach hebraischer Sprach vertuetscht.

"[4] His papers included an unpublished treatise against the essential deity of Christ, which was suppressed by Zwingli; the only extant evidence of his anti-trinitarian views being contained in eight lines of German verse preserved in Sebastian Frank's Chronica.

The discovery of his heterodox Christology (which has led modern Unitarians to regard him as their proto-martyr) was followed by charges of loose living, never heard of in his lifetime, and without evidence or probability.