Page:Complete Works of Menno Simons.djvu/308

8 anabaptists, secretly coming, hedge-preaching, pernicious seed, &c., alas, plainly show the disposition of the man who penned them. Yes, my readers, Gellius knows as well as I do, what Christ has commanded concerning baptism, and how the holy apostles practiced it. Again, that Paul rebaptized some who were baptized of John (although John's baptism was from Heaven) only, because they were not informed concerning the Holy Ghost; that the worthy martyr Cyprian and the African bishops, together with the council of Nice, did not acknowledge the baptism of heretics, as baptism, on account of their being outside of Christ's church, and without his Spirit and word.

Notwithstanding all this, we must be called anabaptists; never minding that we, in our infancy were baptized, not only without the Spirit, faith, word, or divine ordinance, but also without all reason and understanding, with an open, anti-Christian baptism, by such as he and the learned of his class themselves call anti-Christians, apostates, heretics, and deceivers who neither rightly understand God nor his word; who practice open idolatry; who bend their knees before wood and stone; who put their trust in idle doctrines and commands of men; who unrestrainedly walk according to the lusts of the flesh, and who worship and honor a creature of God, namely, a piece of bread, as the only and eternal Son of God.

Although we have before us as a pattern, Christ's plain word, and the salutary doctrine and open practice of the apostles, besides, Paul and both the councils, as heard; yet, alas, there are no bounds to offensive words, such as anabaptists, &c., which Gellius uses against us.

We may not retaliate, Rom. 12: 19, else we might call them infant-baptists with more propriety than they call us anabaptists; for we have the whole Scriptures on our side, but they have not one word nor one example. But his saying that we do and can do most damage in the imperial dominion, shows, alas, his stupidity and blindness.

All Scriptures teach us that idolaters and carnally-minded shall die, and he well knows that in these countries, their (the world's), worship is nothing less than open idolatry and gross abomination and that their life, as a general thing, is nothing but a reckless, impenitent and carnal life, as is the case at Emden and everywhere. Yet he dares to write that there they do most damage. And this he does for no other reason than because they (the pious) storm the kingdom of hell with the Lord's Spirit, word and power; rebuke open idolatry; teach the true worship; rightly confess Christ; and because they point out the true way to this perverse, impenitent, and carnal generation. If this is damaging, as Gellius calls it, then the Scriptures which speak so over-much of an unblamable, pious life, have badly deceived us; this you must admit. O, what a wrong judgment.

Behold, thus does the God of this world blind such rebellious and contentious spirits, who so recklessly contend against the word of God and who do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, Rom. 2: 8, that they become so obdurate and perverse that they call the glorious gain in Christ, attained through his grace. Spirit and power, a loss; and call good, evil, and evil, good; woe unto such, Isaiah 5: 20.

I would further say, that he also says, in other places that we are the only ones who obstruct them in their doctrine of impenitence and offensiveness, by our doctrine (which is not ours but the sound doctrine of Christ), and by our humble and unblamable walk which results from our doctrine through faith; and that we are thus the cause of their not being so highly esteemed as before and that they cannot continue in their ways, as they would like to do; therefore, perhaps, he complains that we do most damage there. But we say, It is because they serve the world under the semblance of the gospel, only from carnal motives; and flatter the rulers that they may aggrandize themselves with the property, church, and cloister, which was intended (though wrongfully), as a sacrifice to the honor of God and that they may maintain the gospel of Christ by force of arms; because they flatter the people with the idea that Christ remitted our sins; that faith alone, avails; that they are poor, weak sinners who cannot keep the commandments of God, and other like idle consolations; so that every body lives