SteveR wrote:
When legions of Roman Catholics come on SA to deny the wicked acts of the counter reformation, I will mete out the same. You like the RCC, cant escape the vile wickedness which plagued the forefathers of your past

SteveR wrote:
Would you like me to post historical accounts of those early Anabaptists which led to their being hunted down like wild dogs?

The simplicity and purity of the church of Christ, the voluntariness of man's belief, freedom of conscience, and the opposition of scripture to infants' baptism without which national reformed churches would have no existence, were the main features of the creed of that people whom papist and protestant, pope and king, alike strove to extirpate. The slaughter was great and indiscriminate. The well disposed and the evil minded were ranked in the same class. Under the pretence of crushing rebellion against the powers ordained of God, conscience was wounded in its tenderest part, its dictates were mocked and scorned, and pure truth and holy liberty driven away from nearly every continental state. During the three centuries that have since elapsed, despotism has ruled with an iron sway, and in these last days given birth to anarchy. The leaven was cast out that would have leavened the populations with its holy and saving power.
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The bitter hatred of the 'reformed' and Roman Catholics endures to this day against all those Baptists who profess the true faith.

It is not the editor's intention here to consider or deny whatever part the baptists may be said to have taken in the Peasant War, the Siege of Munster, or the riots at Amsterdam. It will be seen in the subsequent pages that the persons whose sufferings are recorded, denied all connexion with those lamentable events; and that in fact they held opinions on the subject of war and the use of carnal weapons, which must have led them to disapprove and oppose those movements.

The time is perhaps not far distant when an apologetic tone will have no longer to be adopted in speaking of those outbreaks of popular force, and their explanation and justification be found in an irrepressible desire for civil and religious liberty.

It is evident that the sentiments of the baptists obtained a very wide extension on the continent of Europe, and were not the least important of those elements of strife which mingled in the ferment raised by the bold onslaught of Luther on Rome.

The following pages will discover the true character of these reproached, despised, hated, and persecuted people. The deep interest of the various narratives lies in the proof they exhibit, that although branded by Rome as heretics, and by protestants as rebels, the anabaptists possessed a living and glowing piety, an ardent attachment to the doctrines of the gospel, a firm and abiding trust in God, and a simple reliance on the Christ crucified. If the charge of heresy, brought by the church of Rome against all protestants, must be regarded by every student of the bible as simply meaning a want of conformity to her dogmas, not one whit more value can be attached to the accusations of rebellion and sedition brought by protestants against the anabaptists. Heresy at Rome was sedition at Wittembcrg. In the one case an obnoxious truth was held in opposition to ecclesiastical, in the other to secular authority ; the crime in either case was the same.

SteveR wrote:
... your group of reprobates...

Among the minor parties that attract the reader's attention in studying the rise and progress of the Reformation of the 16th century, the anabaptists must receive a prominent place. He will find their existence regarded as a fearful omen of evil, and their appearance in any land the signal for civil and ecclesiastical hate. Although multitudes under that name of reproach endured the most excruciating tortures for their belief, and suffered the most agonizing of deaths, professing themselves to be servants of the Son of God, no record of those horrible scenes can be found in the Christian martyrologies of the time, whether papal or protestant. By common consent they are excluded from the category of martyrs : or if perchance a stray name be inscribed in the registers of the reformed, the religious belief of the honoured individual is carefully concealed on those points that were obnoxious to the orthodoxy established by Luther, Zuingle, or Calvin.