Page:Complete Works of Menno Simons.djvu/705

405 A VERY SINCERE

EPISTLE TO MARTIN MICRON. All Scriptures teach and enjoin, honorable Martin, that we should love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. On these two commandments, says Christ, hang all the law and the prophets, Matt. 22: 37 — 40; Mark 12: 29; Luke 10: 27; Deut. 6: 5. All that Scripture teaches is love. "Every one that loveth," says John, "is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love," And, "He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him," 1 Jn. 4 : 7, 8, 16. Without this love, it is all vain, whatever we may know, judge, speak, do or write, 1 Cor. 13: 1. The property and fruit of love is meekness, kindness, not envious, not crafty, not deceitful, not pufled up, nor selfish. In short, where love is, there is a christian, also.

Since we are pointed to love by the Scriptures, and cannot be christians without love, And as you do not only call yourself a common layman, but also an exemplary teacher; therefore you have done quite wrong not to have taken into consideration the commandment of love, in the fear of God, before you published your false, infamous, ambitious, anti-christian "Narration" and book.

You have manifested yourself before God and man in such a manner as though you had, never in your life, felt and confessed the least particle of the pure, unadulterated nature of love, as I shall show and explain, by the grace of the Lord, in an impartial, sincere conscience, by this my admonition, out of love of the divine honor and the holy word; as also, out of love for your poor soul, that you (if there is yet a spark of life and a faint light left in you), by such showing, written for your own good, may be induced to see your ulcers and deadly wounds, and yet be cured hj the heavenly medicine of the Lord's Spii'it and word by sincere repentance, to the praise of the Lord and the salvation of your soul. If there be yet any reason left in you, reflect upon what what I tell you.

First, it is manifest, and cannot be successfully denied by you nor by any person else that you have by your writing made a liar of the Almighty, great God, the God of heaven and of earth, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who can neither lie nor de- ceive; for he testifies of Christ, and says, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," Matt. 3 : 17; 17 : 5; Mark 1: 11; 9: 7; Luke 3: 22; 9: 35; 2 Pet. 1: 16; and you say that he is not; for you have verbally confessed to us, and you write so yet at different places, that the man Christ (which you call the human nature in Christ) had no Father.

Observe, whether you are not one of the spirits, of whom John says, "He that be- lieveth not God has made him a liar; be- cause he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son," 1 Jn. 5: 10. Beloved Mi- cron, reflect, and see if I do not write the truth.

Secondly, it is manifest that you have also made a liar of Christ, who is the eternal truth, by your writing; for he confesses more than sixty or seventy times, in John, that he is the Son of God, and that God is his Father; that he came from heaven, and that he was gone forth from the Father; that he is the only begotten Son, &C., and