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Updated: June 3, 2025
Some are called Papists, some Lutherans, and some Anabaptists; names devised of the devil, and yet not fully without ground, for the severing of one man's heart by conceit of opinion from the other." But the remedy was a simple one. Every man was "to travail first for his own amendment."
The personal predilections of Elizabeth might be in favour of what we call the Higher doctrines, or those of Cecil might lean to the Lower; but neither was willing to impose penalties or disabilities for opinions or practices which did not tend either to the anarchism of the Anabaptists, or to the Sacerdotalism of Rome on the one hand or Geneva on the other hand; both were even disposed to remain in official unconsciousness of such individual transgressors as could conveniently be ignored.
Captain Caspar Ortis made a brilliant speculation by taking possession of the Stein, or city prison, whence he ransomed all the inmates who could find means to pay for their liberty. Robbers, murderers, even Anabaptists, were thus again let loose. Rarely has so small a band obtained in three days' robbery so large an amount of wealth.
While Luther was writing his last treatise against the Sacramentarians, he found himself obliged to issue a fresh protest against the Anabaptists.
While, however, his soul was full of piety, it was tolerant of error. Sincerely and deliberately himself a convert to the Reformed Church, he was ready to extend freedom of worship to Catholics on the one hand, and to Anabaptists on the other, for no man ever felt more keenly than he, that the Reformer who becomes in his turn a bigot is doubly odious. His firmness was allied to his piety.
But the decisive battle, which now drew near, was first to be fought with the Anabaptists. During the interval, Zwingli prepared for the people a detailed exposition of the rights of the church and state to the tithe, which the government then used as a general and final decree for the disturbed districts.
Baillie, who took more trouble in sifting his information, and who distinctly allows that the Anabaptists, like other people, ought to have the benefit of the principle "Let no error be charged upon any man which he truly disclaims," and that the errors of some of the sect ought not to be charged upon all, yet maintains that the Confession of the seven Baptist Churches of London was but an imperfect and ambiguous declaration of the opinions of the English Baptists.
They ridiculed, with their farces and their satires, the vices of the clergy. They dramatized tyranny for public execration. It was also not surprising, that among the leaders of the wild anabaptists who disgraced the great revolution in church and state by their hideous antics, should be found many who, like David of Delft, John of Leyden, and others, had been members of rhetorical chambers.
There arose a sect to which was given the name of Anabaptists, from its rejection of infant baptism, a sect with a strange history, which it now falls to us to relate. The new movement, indeed, was not confined to matters of religion. The idea of freedom from authority once set afloat, quickly went further than its advocates intended.
This was milder treatment than the burning alive, burying alive, hanging, and drowning, which had been dealt out to the English and the Netherland heretics by Philip and by Mary, but it was not the spirit which William the Silent had been wont to manifest in his measures towards Anabaptists and Papists alike.
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