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164 the Swiss Anabaptists. But this was when Zwingli and his helpers were more anxious to discredit the Anabaptists than to discover and tell the precise truth about them; and Hübmaier had consistently denied the imputation. He was in favour of such community of goods, he said, as prevailed in the church at Jerusalem, when not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own, but sold their lands and houses that distribution might be made to those who had need. So, he held and taught, Christian believers should hold all property subject to the needs of the brotherhood, available for the assistance of needy brothers—a very different thing from what is generally meant by communism. Nor had he ever taught the extreme doctrine of non-resistance, forbidden Christians to be magistrates, or to pay their taxes. Above all, he had no chiliastic delusions, he had proclaimed no wild exegesis of the prophetic writings, he had not taught his followers to look for the immediate second coming of Christ and the setting up of his millennial kingdom.

It is not hard to understand the fascination that these teachings of Hut and Widemann had for a