the vices and various scandals prevalent in the Church, and then we made known our project. Nov. 8th, the Senate, the Councils and the thirty-five bailiffs from the country met, read over the old decrees, and then agreed on a new one. In this they declare faith is a gift of God, and we have only to do with external affairs. The advice given was, for all to hear the ministers, have their children baptized, go to communion or give an excuse, and have their marriages celebrated in church.' The Baptists who would neither leave the canton voluntarily nor take the oath were to be reported to the Senate.

Four short months sufficed to tolerate this more humane edict. In March, 1535, the Senate issued a declaration supplementary thereto, providing that those who would not submit were to be imprisoned eight days, then, if they persisted, they were to be exiled, and the men who returned were to be put to death by the sword and the women drowned. Still the Baptists grew, and in 1537 they prepared for an open Conference, which, in March, 1538, was held in the capital, debating all the old points with their persecutors. So thoroughly were the authorities confounded, that in the autumn of the same year they decreed that every doctor, preacher and chief of the 'Anabaptists' was to be beheaded without mercy, even if he recanted. Before the execution he was to be put upon the rack to find out what his intention was, and what the Anabaptists would do if they became more powerful than the authorities.' All others of the sect who were arrested should first be labored with, and if persistent put to death, the men with torture added.

The Third Article adopted at Schleitheim says of the Supper: 'All who would break one bread for a memorial of the broken body of Christ, and all who would drink one cup as a memorial of the poured-out blood of Christ, should beforehand be united to the one body of Christ, to wit, by baptism.' Eachard said, in 1645, that the Anabaptists would not communicate with others. . . by strictness of order.' And as to the act of baptism, the First Article says that all who believe in Christ are ‘To be buried with him in death, that with him they may rise.' At this time pouring and aspersion had become very common in most of the western countries, and the first question which arose amongst the Swiss Baptists related to the purging out of infant baptism rather than the restoration of immersion. When that question forced itself upon them they returned to the New Testament order. Dr. Rule, who speaks contemptuously of them, says that they took their converts and plunged them into the nearest streams;' which well accords with the First Article and with Hubmeyer's use of the word 'dipping' in his writings. He prepared a Catechism for those who were to be baptized in water,' and expresses his belief that Christianity will never truly prosper unless baptism is restored to its original purity.'

6

The fact that they built a baptistery at St. Gall, and that John Stumpf, a Lutheran pastor, who lived near Zurich from 1522 to 1543, and wrote of them in 1548 from personal knowledge of their practices, says that they 'Rebaptized in rivers and streams,' is good evidence that they immersed. As we have already seen,

6

another Roman Catholic historian, August Neaf, Secretary to the Council of St. Gall, in his history of that city, published at Zurich (1859–1863), says that in 1525 the Baptists there' Baptized those who believed with them, in rivers and lakes, and in a great wooden vat on the Butcher's Square, before a great crowd.' Simler says thatMany came to St. Gall, inquired for the Taufhaus (Baptistery), and were baptized.' (Collection, i, p. 132.) Then Sicher, a Roman Catholic, gives this account of their baptisms at St. Gall: The number of the converted increased so, that the baptistery could not contain the crowd, and they were compelled to use the streams and the Sitter River, to which on Sundays those desirous of baptism went in so great numbers that they resembled a procession.' 22 At first Grebel poured water on the head of Blaurock, at Zurich, out of a 'dipper,' and called it baptism. Afterward, when he changed his mind on the subject, he immersed Ulimann in the Rhine, and Cornelius tells of the joyous procession which he led from St. Gall to be baptized in the Sitter, a distance of nearly three miles. Surely one 'dipper,' at least, must have been left in that city, April 9th, 1525, to have rendered this service had it been needed that day. Dr. Osgood tells us that he took the pains, in 1867, to walk from St. Gall to the Sitter, to inspect the country and reach the reasons for their long journey. He found that 'A mountain stream, sufficient for all sprinkling purposes, flows through the city; but in no place is it deep enough for the immersion of a person, while the Sitter River is between two and three miles away, and is gained by a dif ficult road. The only solution of this choice was, that Grebel sought the river, in order to immerse candidates.' 23

All this shows us what Ecolampadius meant when he cried out: You are not Baptists but Catabaptists, that is, "perverters of baptism." 24 Featley says: 'At Vienna the Anabaptists are tied together with ropes, and one draweth the other into the river to be drowned, as it should seem, the wise magistrates of that place had an eye to that old maxim of justice: let the punishment bear upon it the point of the sin, for as these sectaries drew one another into their error, so also into the gulf; and as they drowned men spiritually by rebaptizing, and so profaning the holy sacrament, so also they were drowned corporeally.' He clearly alludes to the drowning of Hubmeyer's wife and others in martyrdom at Vienna.

24

A

CHAPTER III.

MONGST the so-called 'Anabaptists' there were three views as to civil We government. A very small party, those of Münster, believed in establishing Christ's kingdom by the sword at the cost of sedition and revolution. have seen that the party represented chiefly by Hubmeyer, believed in government, paid all taxes and obeyed all ordinances that did not interfere with the free exercise of religion. But, as a magistrate must bind himself by civil oaths and use the sword, they held that a Christian should not be a magistrate, because the Apostles knew nothing of Church taxes imposed by the State, held no civil office and took no part in war. They thought that civil government was necessary for the wicked; but their foes either could not or would not understand them. Their modern enemies evince the same state of mind. Hence, in one breath they tell us that they were perverse, enemies of civil government, and would not touch the sword either for war or capital punishment. And, without blushing, in the next breath they tell us as coolly that they drew the sword, established theocratic magistrates and deluged Germany with blood. That is, they deliberately did what their first principles would not allow them to do, and suffered martyrdom for doing that which, in conscience, they refused to do.

The Sixth Article in the SCHLEITHEIM CONFESSION contains a clear and distinct recognition of the divine sanction of civil government, its legitimate powers, duties, and obligations. It as fully defines the absolute separation of Christian discipline and polity from the civil power-denouncing the use of the sword by Christian people for any purpose. It enjoins abstention from lawsuits in worldly disputes, and is so careful of the sphere of Christian action, as to advise exclusive devotion

HUBMEYER ON GOVERNMENT.

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to Christian duty and refusal to assume the responsibilities of civil office. Whether we approve their views or not, we cannot readily misunderstand what they were. They had never known a government which did not require magistrates to persecute others for their religion; and it was but natural that they should shrink from any civil service which demanded such persecution as a duty to God and man.

Let

Hubmeyer represented a third class, who believed in all the usual forms of civil government, in which all citizens should participate in common, including the proper use of the sword outside of persecution. These were called 'Swordsmen' by the other parties, and in 1528 two hundred dissidents withdrew from Hubmeyer at Nicolsburg, calling themselves 'Staffsmen,' to designate their non-resistant principles, because they would not touch the sword either in revolt or warfare. When, therefore, the Zwinglian and Catholic peasants of Switzerland arose against the authorities, the non-resistant Baptists refused to unite their fortunes with them, and Grebel denied that he ever entertained a thought of subverting the government.1 Hubmeyer complained that his enemies, of whom he said that he had as many as the old Dragon had scales,' misrepresented him on this subject, and to put himself right he dedicated a tract on 'The Sword' to the Chancellor of Moravia, in which he thus speaks of the passage, 'My kingdom is not of this world:' 'There must be judges, or the Scriptures will fall to pieces which speak of their duties. "The power of the keys;" yes, that power belongs to the Church, but it is distinct from civil tribunals. So long as men will not obey God there must be courts. us be thankful for a just government, though our sins deserve an unjust one. eye for an eye;" yes, that was old-time revenge, but now courts execute penalty. "Our weapons are not carnal;" no, not the weapons of the Church, but the weapons of the State are. The two swords should not be opposed to each other. A Christian judge will be most apt to be just. Satan, depart and no longer mislead simple people. "Love your enemies;" yes, that is for the individual, but the government does not punish from envy, from hatred, but from justice, and is not referred to in the text.' No Reformer of the sixteenth century holds the balance so exactly as this, in defining the relations of the State to its citizens and to the Church. He advocated civil government and the freedom of the Church from the State as clearly as any writer of our own day. Nor did Zwingli misunderstand the delicate distinction which this class of Baptists drew on that subject. Under the title of 'Who gives occasion to disturbance' he issued a challenge to them, in which he says : 'They want to have a Church, but no government is to protect the preaching of the Gospel by any violent measures or interfere with the freedom even of heretical preachers.'

"An

Denk, whom Haller calls the 'Apollo of the Anabaptists,' held to the same principles. He says: 'The Apostles treat earnestly that Christians must be subject to government. But they do not teach that they may be governors, for Paul says,

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BAPTISTS SLAIN FOR THEIR OPINIONS.

"What have I to do to judge them that are without?" He would have Christians withdraw from politics, and leave unconverted men to wield the sword of the civil and military ruler as a thing entirely separate from the Church. Denk took the ground, that all government must be sustained as the Apostles sustained it, namely: That in the Church Christ was King and held the spiritual sword for excommunication. That was the only spiritual sword which he knew; but for the proper ends of civil government, the material sword was in the hands of the State, whose authority was from God. The other Reformers knew nothing about the distinction between civil and religious government on this broad and high plane. Keller draws this sharp distinction: While Denk, with energy, defended the proposition that it was not becoming in civil magistrates to proceed against their subjects with force in matters of faith; both Luther and Zwingli taught that it was the duty of the civil magistrates to establish the true faith within their territorial limits, and to maintain it with the severest penalties.' That discreet historian, Mosheim, recognizes these various classes of Baptists, and says: They are called Anabaptists because they all denied that infants are proper subjects of baptism, and solemnly baptized over again those who had been baptized in infancy; yet, from the very beginning, just as at the present day, they were split into various parties, which disagreed and disputed about points of no small importance.' He is too careful to make 'Anabaptisın' and sedition convertible words, but says, that these Baptists

'Did not all suffer on account of their crimes, but many of them merely for the erroneous opinions which they maintained honestly, without fraud or crime. It is, indeed, true that many Anabaptists were put to death, not as being bad citizens or injurious members of civil society, but as being incurable heretics, who were condemned by the old canon laws, for the error concerning adult baptism. . . . I could wish there had been some discrimination made, and that all who believe that adults only are to be baptized, and that the ungodly are to be expelled the Church, had not been indiscriminately put to death.'a

But true history is bringing them its calm revenges of justification.

In the first quarter of the sixteenth century many Catholics were much stirred on the subject of Church reform, but the most earnest souls sought it mainly in the rise and growth of monastic orders, in which Saxony abounded. Their idea was, that withdrawal from the world was better than victory over it, that it were better to avoid temptation than to combat it, and to be a monk than to be a man. Pressed to this extreme, piety lapsed into senility on the one hand and into fanaticism on the other. In this atmosphere the mystics had sprung up amongst the pre-Reformers with much honor to Christianity. The forgotten doctrine of the Spirit, as an experimental fact, appeared in one direction and a sterner ritualistic system in another. The mystics threw aside the wild notion that baptism can cleanse the soul, and that the soul is sustained by a morsel of bread and a drop of wine, instead of by the indwelling Spirit. Tauler caught this doctrine from Eckart, his master, and while Luther