Page:Complete Works of Menno Simons.djvu/354

54 they mean to believe without deceit and hypocrisy which he rightly asked of the Ethiopian; and of Luke, to leave an example to all servants of the church, how those of mature years should be baptized, he has rightly pointed out, since he also had arrived to years of maturity. We say, that this is right. We would also state what we desire of all baptizers, is: That they first examine well the faith and foundation of those who wish to be baptized, before they baptize them, that they, in their work and service, may not prove hypocrites.

I think that this is a plain example that the servants of the church should not ask the confession of faith from others, but from those, themselves, who wish to be baptized, as also Otto Brunsu says concerning this: he says not (he writes), If you do believe or answer for your child, it is then permitted to be baptized.

Since Gellius refers us to the disciples and to those baptized of John, and, as appears, would thereby demonstrate that baptism does not require true faith, and that it makes no difference whether faith comes before or after; and, since we, also, are called anabaptists by him, therefore I in my weakness, would ask him, If the command of Christ and the example of the eunuch are not sufficient to show that faith should precede baptism, and that baptism requires true faith, and why Paul re-baptized the disciples of John, who had before been baptized with the baptism of John, while John's baptism was not of men, but from heaven? Matt. 21: 25. He cannot, scripturally, answer it otherwise, than that it was done because they had never known that there was a Holy Ghost. Inasmuch, then, as these disciples were once baptized in their years of maturity, with divine baptism, and lacked nothing but that they did not have an understanding of the Holy Ghost, and were, on that account, re-baptized of Paul—therefore Gellius should consider whether or not true, Christian baptism requires true faith, and whether he does not wrong us by contemptuously calling us anabaptists because we re-baptize those who were not baptized with a divine baptism, as were the disciples of John, but with an anti-Christian baptism, without any knowledge, faith, command, or word, as the reckless, ignorant world, in part, can judge and see.

If we, then, are anabaptists because we re-baptize those who received a baptism instituted of man and which was practiced upon those who had no knowledge whatever, how much, then, was Paul an anabaptist since he re-baptized those who were of understanding minds and baptized with a baptism which was from heaven and ordained of God.

In the second place I would ask, since he calls us anabaptists, as has been heard. Why he still adheres to Cyprian, together with both the Concilions—the African and the Nicene? which unanimously resolved: "That heretics have no baptism, and that therefore those, who have been baptized of heretics, should be baptized with the true baptism." If he says that it is according to the Scriptures and right, then he admits that he was not baptized with the right baptism, and that we are right in re-baptizing those who have been baptized of such who are not alone by Scripture, but also by Luther, Zuingli, and the learned, pronounced anti-Christian servants and the root of all heresy, before the whole world, as we may on every hand see in their writings.

But if he pronounce it offensive and sectarian, then he thereby testifies, in the first place, that the church, or at least a great part of it, was at that time offensive and sectarian.

In the second place, That he couples God's Spirit, word, work, ordinance, and command with the anti-Christian and heretical service and works.

In the third place, That he is an anti-Christian and heretic himself, since he was baptized with an anti-Christian and heretical baptism, and that he yet defends it as the true baptism.

O, my reader, that Gellius had but half an understanding of the word of God, and could but see a little of the truth, he would, all his life-time lament to God that he has so lamentably profaned the Lord's express command and ordinance, given through John, Christ and the apostles; that he has so inimically slandered the pious, and that