About the middle of September the little group
reached
the Ronneburg and met John Adam Gruber, leader of the German
Inspirationists. Instead of being greeted warmly as martyrs
for the cause, the young disciples of Giezendanner heard
their master accused of egoism, self-interest, and
faithlessness. Speaking as the voice of the Holy Spirit,
Gruber asked Giezendanner:
"Do you think you have
done rightly by practically profaning the honor of my
name and taking that honor for yourself? I have already
warned you many times against your own spirit. I will no
longer suffer such dishonor; you shall not appear in the
assemblies of my children, but shall betake yourself to
an animal-like seclusion and there come to know the
magnitude of your misery, and do penance for it. For you
have not acted in my name; that is, not according to my
will."
Giezendanner never prophesied again.
Sometime before 1720 he returned to Toggenburg, not as
the famous prophet, but as a sick and broken man. He took up
his goldsmith's trade and continued his pietistic activities
quietly and in private meetings. A hearing before the
Toggenburg Synod in 1722 brought little more than a warning
and advice to stop teaching privately until his orthodoxy was
established. No more is heard of Giezendanner for ten years,
when a Basel pastor and Pietist leader mentioned him in his
account of a journey through east Switzerland (*3).
"He received us in a
friendly manner, conducted edifying conversations with
us, and accompanied us to Wattwil. His natural complexion
seemed to be melancholic -- choleric and therefore the
source of some of the bad things that people thought
earlier to see in him. For with that sort of temperament
there is often wildfire and sick fantasy. Otherwise,
thought, we could not doubt the integrity of his heart
before God, and he may indeed stand better before the
Lord and Judge than his slanderers and persecutors, who
have continued to defame him so much before the
world."
*3 In 1731, Hieronymus
d'Anonne, made this note in his travel diary.
REF: Der Schweizerische Protestantismus im XVIII.
Jahrhundert I (Tübingen 1922), p. 189 by Paul Wernle
REF: Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Abschrift,
Handschriftenabteilung, Briefe an Hieronymus d'Anonne, Sign.
F II, 244
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