Page:Complete Works of Menno Simons.djvu/362

62 our worship, do not follow conjectures, our own desires, false explanations, and doctrines of men, as we are accused of, Christ's plain word and command, the doctrine and usage of the holy apostles, and of the true, primitive church; and, as they (our opponents) are no more commanded to baptize children than Israel was to circumcise females, or that they should found churches, altars, and places of worship on hills, or in dales, or that they should offer their children as burnt-offerings, or that the papists should baptize bells as they are accustomed to, and since they call and persecute the baptism ordained of Christ, as the baptism of heretics, and esteem and practice infant baptism, which was instituted through hypocrisy, as a Christian baptism, and since they, besides, boast that they do right by not abandoning this practice; therefore I would gladly leave it to the judgment of all reasonable and impartial readers, who of us are the Sanherib, Holofernes, Pharisaical, and deceiving sects, mentioned as trusting in false security.

Answer. Reader, observe, What else does he hereby say than, Beloved lords, will you yet be merciful unto such an offensive people and wicked heretics? Persecute, imprison, banish, and destroy them. They are deserving of it. You may consider and judge whether the Holy Spirit, in the Revelation does not call this the sting of scorpions, Rev. 9: 10. Further on he says that our church was originated by me; something which, as will be hereafter shown, I do not admit. He knows very well that I never was found in the company of the rebellious; but that I reproved their doctrines and abominations with the word of the Lord, as much as I ever did those of the preachers. Notwithstanding, he accuses us of these ungodly practices and wicked deeds; that he may thereby make us, who are innocent, suspicioned of all the world, and deliver us unto the sword of the magistracy. I will leave it to the consideration of all the pious and good-fearing, if this is not seeking the blood of the innocent.

O, that he would have sufficient discretion not to mix the innocent with the guilty. For what else does he seek than to change Simon Peter into Simon Magus, and John and James into Judas?

If I should say, I have known some infant baptists which were open perjurers and thieves, therefore Gellius and all the infant baptists are perjurers and thieves. Would not that be wrong? O, faithful reader, how justly has holy David portrayed such slanderers, saying, The wicked murder the innocent in secret places; his eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly, as a lion in his den; he lieth in wait to catch the poor, &c., Ps. 10: 8, 9. For, by such murderous cries, it is caused, that in different places, the pious and faithful hearts—men and women, youths and virgins, the gray-headed, the lame and halt are pitilessly and mercilessly imprisoned and robbed, their children sent abroad in the world, homeless and penniless, as the most wicked upon earth. Some are thrown into boiling oil; others are hanged, racked, drowned, strangled, burned, beheaded, or tortured by some other heathenish and tyrannical means. Behold, such are, alas, the consequences of the deceiving and false writings of such blood-thirsty preachers, in some countries.

Would to God, that he and his preachers, together with all the papists and monks, who are guilty of innocent blood, may find mercy and grace before the eyes of the great and Almighty God, in the day when the fearful sound of the last trumpet shall sound, and that the innocent blood of which they are guilty, be not counted against them. This is my sincere wish and prayer. But if they continue in their present minds, and do not turn from ungodliness, then, says the Spirit of God, the fiery pool will be their reward and part. Rev. 19: 21.

Further, I would say, Just as we hate and reprove (understand this in a gospel-like way) the bitter and inimical heart, and the bloody and fiendish crying and writing of Gellius and all the contentious—so, also, do we hate and reprove those that take up the sword, steal, rob, or in any manner