The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

Church stands in living antagonism to the formalism of Rome, and to the
fanaticism of all pseudo-Protestantism. It has the body, but disavows the
flesh; it has spirituality, but carefully guards it against running into
spiritualism.
Muenzer.
The most renowned of the Anabaptists in history was THOMAS
MUENZER, who was originally preacher in Allstaedt. He was deposed
on account of his fanaticism, and uniting himself with the Anabaptists,
became their leader. He published a bitter attack upon the Baptism of
children. Leaving Saxony, he passed through a large portion of Germany
with his associates, everywhere finding, among a population degraded by
the current Romanism, abundance of adherents. Returning to Saxony, he
established himself at Muehlhus, where he aroused the peasantry, claimed
princely authority, gathered an army, abolished the magistracy, proclaimed
that in future Christ alone was to be king, and made war in 1525 upon the
princes themselves. The rebel bands were defeated at Franckenhus, and
Muenzer was put to death.
John of Leyden.
Prominent also among the Anabaptists were those who were led by
JOHN OF LEYDEN, so called from his having seized upon that city,
where he overthrew the magistracy, assumed the government with the title
of king, made laws to suit himself and his followers, and practised great
cruelties toward those who did not yield themselves to him. The city was
besieged in 1526; an immense number of his adherents were slain, and he
himself was put to death. It is evident that the Anabaptist movement was
political as well as religious, and was largely a reaction, blind and ignorant,
against gross abuses. The Anabaptists are condemned in the Confession,
not in their persons, but in their errors; the man was not condemned--the
errorist, or more strictly the error in the errorist, was condemned.
II. The SECOND point is: "Who disapprove of the Baptism of
children, and teach that it is not right."
Arguments of the Anabaptists.
It is natural here to look at the grounds on which the Anabaptists
object to Infant Baptism, and say that it is not right. The most plausible
arguments which they urge against it, have been in a large part anticipated
in