Page:Complete Works of Menno Simons.djvu/550

250 of Christ Jesus. O ye vain boasters, if you are the true Christians in whom God is pleased, as you pretend, where then, is your Christian baptism in which you have buried your sins and put on the new life? Where is your true Supper in which you proclaim the death of the Lord and show your brotherly love? Where is your love and fear of God? your love of your neighbors? Your humility of heart? Your mercifulness towards the needful? Your obedience to the commandments of God? Your new birth from above, from which results a new life which should be unblamable before God, and before all the world? Jas. 1: 27. Where is the living, holy, and pleasing sacrifice of your own body, which you should ever be ready to present for the sake of the Lord's truth? We find nothing amongst you but unbelief and its evil fruits; an anti-Christian baptism, idolatrous supper; unclean love of flesh, unmercifulness, pride, avarice, disobedience in all divine matters, carnal birth, earthly mindedness, and the old blamable life, led according to the will of him who, from the beginning, was a proud, false, deceitful, cruel, and bloody murderer.

We find amongst you no worship but only a self-begotten set of rites which are pleasing to the flesh, such as, bells, organs, singing, celebration, ornamented churches, beautiful images, differences in victuals and in days, false purification and promises, reading many psalms and pater nosters with the mouth and not spiritually, adulteration of the sacraments, and a destruction and garbling of all that which Christ Jesus has taught and commanded in his holy gospel. All of which are, verily, no works of regenerated Christians; but rather the works of Satan or of the foolish, blind, and ignorant flesh. For by these works neither the word nor righteousness of God is taught: no flesh is crucified; no neighbors are served; and above all they are not pleasing to God. Therefore they can not be considered, according to Scripture, services of God, but rather an abominable, fearful, and terrible service of idols. For by such means the ignorant, trusting populace is led away from the true faith and trust in Christ Jesus and is led into a false trust in ceremonies, yea, in such ceremonies as the eternal wisdom, the blessed Christ Jesus, has never commanded. By which ceremonies they plainly show that they believe at heart that Christ Jesus is imperfect, foolish, and unclean. For in case they believed him to be wise and perfect how could they thus shamefully adulterate, break, despise, and garble his perfect, evangelical word and ordinances? And if they acknowledged him to be spotless why do they seek their salvation in such impure and strange means, and not in the only pure sacrifice, which is Christ Jesus?

But because true religion opposes your carnal mindedness, pride, avarice, uncleanness, vanity, ease, and the lusts of your flesh, therefore you have chosen for yourselves a vain and strange religion by which you think to be saved, although you do not live according to the word and will of God. O, no, dear reader, no. I repeat it, if all creatures under the heavens were devouring swords, fire, and water; if all men were cruel, horrible, and bloody tyrants; and if the acuteness of the learned, ruled all the people, yet all would be vanity. If you would enter into life, you must be born again, Jn. 3: 5, you must be regenerated and in malice you should be children, 1 Cor. 14: 20; yea, you must keep the commandments which were taught and commanded of Jesus Christ, Matt. 18. Nothing can be devised as a substitute; for there will never be a way to salvation other than Christ Jesus.

It is too plain, and indiscreet blindness to think that we could be saved and at the same time be avaricious, spiteful, envious, proud, adulterous, and idolatrous, as all the Scriptures too plainly show and teach that such shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Did you ever find falsehood with God? I think not. Holy Paul says that God is one "that can not lie," Tit. 1: 2. Christ Jesus says, "Thy word is truth," Jn. 17: 17. If he be, then, a God that can not lie; and if his holy word be truth; O, ye miserable, then all is lost with you. For his doctrine and truth is, that the unbelieving, refractory, disobedient, avaricious, vain, lying, whoring, greedy, obdurate, idolatrous, adulterous, ambitious, bloodthirsty, and carnal man shall not enter into