ought to possess no property, but live in fraternity and community, as did the apostolic society; that there can be no marriage between one who has faith and one who has not, such a marriage being prostitution.
These two summaries of the Anabaptist faith, as held in the sixteenth century, give a very good idea of its spirit. But they are undoubtedly imperfect, and are rather to be regarded as accentuating the points of their witness than as giving a full account of their creed. What they held in common with other Christians was not the least important part of their faith. For Anabaptism was simply the outcome in the sixteenth century of that undercurrent of Christian faith and Christian tradition which had probably never ceased among the oppressed and suffering classes since it first flowed from the heart and the lips of the Divine Man who appeared in the form of a poor and unlettered Carpenter of Nazareth.
In this very doctrine of a permanent inspiration, the Anabaptists were manifestly of the same faith as Thomas à Kempis, Francis of Assisi, and Joachim of Calabria, while they appear in nearly all particulars the direct descendants of the Brethren of the Unity, the Taborites and the Lollards.
This faith, which had been filtering into the hearts of the poor and suffering European people for fifteen centuries, and which had burst forth time after time to renovate the established and visible Church, was now working with such power that the people felt courage enough to demand justice. A manifesto appeared in the form of Twelve Articles, setting forth the popular griefs. The first Article claimed the right to elect their own pastors; the second an arrangement of the tithes in the spirit of their institution in the Old Testament; the third is a good specimen of the scope and spirit of the whole:—
"In the third place, it has been the custom until now to oblige us to be bondsmen, which is a miserable state of things, seeing that Christ, by His oblivion-making blood, has released and ransomed the lowest shepherd as well as the mightiest potentate, none being excepted. Therefore it is written in the Scriptures that we are free, and we will be free. Not that we will have no magistrates; that is not what God has taught us. We are bound to live according to the law, and not in
