§ 102. THE ANABAPTIST CONTROVERSY. 609
fore the baptism of a child had no meaning, and was invalid. Faith must be present, and cannot be taken for granted as a future certainty. Instead of baptism he introduced a solemn presentation or consecration of children before the congregation. He made common cause with the Anabaptists of Ziirich, and with Thomas Miinzer, who came into the neighborhood of Waldshut, and kindled the flame of the Peasants’ War. He is supposed by some to be the author of the Twelve Articles of the Peasants. He was re-baptized about Easter, 1525, and re-baptized many others. He abolished the mass, and removed the altar, baptismal font, pictures and crosses, from the church. The triumph of the re-action against the rebellious peasants forced him to flee to Ziirich (December, 1525). He had a public disputation with Zwingli, who had himself formerly leaned to the view that it would be better to put off baptism to riper years of responsibility, though he never condemned infant-baptism. He retracted under pressure and protest, and was dismissed with some aid. He went to Nikolsburg in Moravia, published a number of books in German, having brought a printing-press with him from Switzerland, and gathered the Baptist “ Brethren” into congregations. But when Moravia, after the death of Louis of Hungary, fell into the possession of King Ferdinand of Austria, Hiibmaier was arrested with his wife, sent to Vienna, charged with complicity in the Peasants’ War, and burned to death, March 10, 1528. He died with serene courage and pious resignation. His wife, who had strengthened him in his faith, was drowned three days later in the Danube. Zwingli, after his quarrel with Hiibmaier, speaks unfavorably of his character; Vadian of St. Gall, and Bullinger, give him credit for great eloquence and learning, but charge him witha restless spirit of innovation. He was an advocate of the voluntary principle, and a martyr of religious freedom. Heretics, he maintained, sre those only who wickedly oppose the Holy Scriptures, and
610 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
should be won by instruction and persuasion. To use force is to deny Christ, who came to save, not to destroy.
A few months before Hiibmaier’s death, Luther wrote, rather hastily, a tract against the Anabaptists (January or February, 1528), in the shape of a letter to two unnamed ministers in Catholic territory! “I know well enough,” he begins, “that Balthasar Hibmor quotes me among others by name, in his blasphemous book on Re-baptism, as if I were of his foolish mind. But I take comfort in the fact that neither friend nor foe will believe such a lie, since I have sufficiently in my sermons shown my faith in infant-baptism.” He expressed his dissent from the harsh and cruel treatment of the Anabaptists, and maintained that they ought to be resisted only by the Word of God and arguments, not by fire and sword, unless they preach insurrection and resist the civil magistrate.” At the same time he ungenerously depreciated the constancy of their martyrs, and compared them to the Jewish martyrs at the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Donatist martyes.2 He thought it served the papists right, to be troubled with such sectaries of the Devil in punishment for not tolerating the gospel. He then proceeds to refute their objections to infantbaptism.
1. Infant-baptism is wrong because it comes from the pope, who is Antichrist. But then we ought to reject the Scriptures, and Christianity itself, which we have in common
1 He calls it in a letter to Spalatin, Feb. 5, 1528 (De Wette, III. 279), “‘ enistolam tumultuarie scriptam.’’ He alludes to it in several other letters of the same year (III. 250, 253, 263).
2 The passage is quoted in § 11, p. 60.
8 Letter to Link, May 12, 1528 (De Wette, III. 311): *‘ Constantiam Anabaptistarum morientium arbitror similem esse illi, qua Augustinus celebrat Donatistas et Josephus Judeos in vastata Jerusalem, et. multa talia furorem esse Satan non est dubium, presertim ubi sic moriuntur cum blasphemia sacramenti. Sancti martyres, ut noster Leonardus Kaiser [a Lutheran of Bavaria who was beheaded Aug. 18, 1527] cum timore et humilitate magnaqiie animi erga hostes lenitate moriuntur : illi vero quasi hostium tedio et indignatione pertinaciam suam augere, et sic mori videntur.”