God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must be dull indeed if we cannot imagine the elevation of spirit such a faith would produce in any man. The children of generations of downtrodden serfs needed a strong tonic to enable them to struggle with the descendants of those who had been their masters for ages, and who still possessed all the wealth, power, and culture of this world.
As in every movement, there were two sections—the one moderate, averse to the sword, wishing to conquer by endurance; the other, extreme and eager to proclaim the war. In its original and final phases Anabaptism, with the exception of its maintenance of the ordinances, very closely resembled the views of the Society of Friends. But at this crisis the moderate party was gradually drawn into the vortex and supported the insurrection.
Certain Anabaptist confessions of faith give us an idea of the beliefs of the two sections of the popular party. That of the most peaceable may be gathered from the principles taught by Gabriel, who was a disciple of Jacob Hutter, founder of the Herrnhutter, who was a disciple of Nicholas Storch, the first of the mystics of Zwickau. The points of the Gabrielist confession of faith were:—an elect people ordained to reign over the earth that they may extirpate evil; community of goods; no alliance with the unregenerate, either in worship or marriage; adult baptism; the Lord's Supper, a fraternal communion and memorial of Christ's death; faith, a gift of God; no compulsion in matters of faith; prayer worthless unless inspired; capital punishment, pleadings in courts of law, oaths, and all absolute power incompatible with the Christian faith.
Of the views of the more extreme party we have a summary by Melanchthon, their enemy. He describes them as teaching that sin is not in infants; that they do not need any baptism; that innate weakness is not sin, sin only existing when a reasonable man tolerates and favours his weaknesses; that every infant, no matter whether it be Turk or Pagan, enters heaven without baptism, for all that God has made is good; that a Christian who rules by the sword can neither be prince nor regent, nor exert any authority whatever; that Christians recognise as their superiors only those who are servants of the Word of God; that a Christian
