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with Munzer in reference to baptism. They did not believe in the use of the
sword as he did. Doubtless, they now found that in purpose they and the
Saxon reformer differed widely. Munzer’s aims were social and political
chiefly.” f513
Says Mosheim, whom, we have seen, clearly recognizes different sects of
Anabaptists:
“It would betray, however, a strange ignorance, as an unjustifiable partiality,
to maintain, that even all that professed, in general, this absurd doctrine, were
chargeable that with furious and brutal extravagance, which has been
mentioned, as the character of too great a part of their sect. This was by no
means the case; several of these enthusiasts discovered a milder and more
pacific spirit, and were free from any other reproach than that which resulted
from the errors they maintained, and their too ardent effort of spreading them
among the multitude. It may still further be affirmed with truth, that MANY of
those who followed the wiser class of Anabaptists, nay, some who adhered to
the most extravagant factions of that sect, were men of upright intentions and
sincere piety, who were seduced into this mystery of fanaticism and iniquity,
by their ignorance and simplicity on the one hand, and by a laudable desire of
reforming the corrupt state of religion on the other. … those who had no
other marks of peculiarity than their administering baptism to adult persons
only, and their excluding the unrighteous from the external communion of the
church ought undoubtedly to have net with milder treatment than what was
given to those seditious incendiaries, who were for unhinging all government
and destroying all civil authority. … It is true, indeed, that MANY
Anabaptists suffered death, not on account of their being considered
rebellious subjects, but merely because they were judged to be incurable
heretics, for in this century the error of limiting the administration of baptism
to adult persons only, and the practice of re-baptizing such as had received
that sacrament in a state of infancy, were looked upon as most flagitious and
in-tolerable heresies. … A HANDFUL, of madmen who got into their heads the
visionary notion of a new and spiritual kingdom,”
were the madmen of Munster. f514
Says Armitage: “Gieseler says that ‘no traces of Anabaptist fanaticism were
seen’ in the Peasants’ War.” f515
“Some individual Anabaptists were drawn into the contest, as at Muhlhausen;
under the lead of Munzer, who was not, in any proper sense of the term, an
Anabaptist himself. On the contrary, Keller, in his late work on the
Reformation, (p. 370), says that Cornelius has shown that in the chief points
Munzer was opposed to the Baptists.’ f516 “But differing from Baptists, he
practiced infant baptism twice a year, christening all born in his congregation.
In 1522, at Alstedt, he threw aside the Latin liturgy and prepared one in
German, in which he retained the formula for infant baptism. … It is,
therefore, a singular perversity that so many writers should have attempted to