A protest about the condition of the Bohemians

I, Thomas Müntzer, born in Stolberg and residing in Prague, the city of the precious and holy fighter Jan Hus, think that the loud and moving trumpets [that once sounded in this city] were rilled with the praise of the holy spirit. With my whole heart I will testify about my faith and lamentingly complain about present conditions to the whole church of the elect and to the whole world, wherever this document may be received. Christ and all of the elect who have known me from my youth on confirm such a project.

I pledge on my highest honor that I have applied my most concentrated and highest diligence in order that I might have or obtain a higher knowledge than other people of the foundations on which the holy and invincible Christian faith is based. The truth makes me so bold as to say that no pitch-smeared parson and surely no pseudospiritual monk can say anything about the foundation of the faith in even its smallest point. In addition, many people have complained with me that they too, burdened by the unbearable and evident deception of the clergy, were never consoled, and that they have had to direct their desires and works carefully in the faith and to elevate themselves spiritually. The clergy have never been able to discover, nor will they ever, the beneficial tribulations and useful abyss which the providential spirit meets as it empties itself.