Beginning of the Believers' Baptism - History of the Anabaptists Part Two

It's good to see you all this evening. Um, uh, this is the second lecture, um, and we're gonna be looking at the beginnings of believers' baptism in Zurich, uh, looking at the years 1522 to 1527. And of course, the first believers' baptism happens on January 21st, 1525. So we're actually gonna be looking at the background, what led up to, um, believers' ba to that, uh, event, uh, because it didn't happen in a vacuum, and it didn't happen overnight. It was actually a progression of things.

Um, and it's in Zurich, which is in Switzerland. How many any ho any of you folks been to Switzerland? Okay. All right. Yeah. I was in Geneva, which is part of Switzerland now. It really wasn't back then. All right. Um, this is a map of Switzerland around 1500. And, um, Switzerland was not a nation at this particular point in time. It was a confederacy of independent cantons or states, most of which, uh, had, uh, h-had in which both the kinda capital of the of the canton and the canton itself had the same name. And so you had let me see if this thing works here, how this is working. Okay. So you have Zurich. Down here is Bern.

Okay. Lucerne is right there. Um, Uri, which is right down here. Um, Schwyz, which is right up here. Unterwalden, which is right in here. Uh, Zug. Let me see. Zug is right up here. And Glarus is over here's where's Glarus? Right there.

And Basel is up here. And Freiburg is down here. Uh, right, right in here. And Schlotth-Lohren is right up here. And Schaffhausen is up here. And Appenzell is over here. Okay. And those are the cantons around about the time we're talking. Now, today, there's like 26 cantons and so on. There's actually la there were actually large parts of, of Switzerland that were not organized into cantons and weren't fully part of the con of the Swiss Confederacy at during the 16th century but were associated with it. Like, um, let me see here. Oh, no. That's going back here.

Oh, there we are. Uh, this thing moves. Oops. Okay. Oh, no. I'm, I'm going the wrong way. Sorry. There we are. Uh, like St. Gallen, which is going to, uh, uh, we're gonna be referring to later on. That was an early center of Anabaptism in, in Switzerland. Interesting enough, you see down here Ge uh, Geneva is just a city. It's actually, uh, it's it doesn't have much territory to it. Later on, that's where Calvin was. Um, and this area right in here is kind of is an area that is kinda jointly administered by the other cantons. All right?

Um, the Swiss Confederacy had its beginning in the 1300s, uh, with three, uh, cantons joining an alliance, and more were added over the next centuries. One of the things that they agreed to is that they would not enter into any, uh, alliance with foreign powers without the consent of the other cantons.

Uh, they met in a deet, uh, sort of a representative, um, uh, uh, meeting. Uh, w all the cantons sent representatives to it, and they discussed affairs and stuff like that. Um, and that's where they would make these decisions. One of the things that was really interesting about Switzerland is that particularly in, um, the area down in here, okay, that's a very mountainous area. It's not very productive, and its chief product was mercenary soldiers.

Uh, the young men would go off. They would form companies, um, under a captain, and they would hire themselves out to various principal principles, um, princesses and, and, um, and, uh, nobles and other, um, things, uh, as mercenary soldiers. And there were even a eve in a couple cases in which some Swiss mercenaries were found themselves in battle against other Swiss mercenaries because they were on opposite sides, and, and they, they were paid for it. Um, the Pope hired them. In fact, the Pope still has Swiss guards, and that goes back to this practice here. Zwingli hated this. Um, uh, the, the reformer who, uh, in Zurich, he really disapproved of it. He thought it was a corrupting influence, and, um, he worked very hard to get it, um, get it stopped.

But these cantons down in here, Schwartz, Uri, and Glarus, um, they, they stayed Catholic, and they really oppo and so the whole mercenary question also was a big it there's so many things that kinda play into how people go one side or the other, uh, issues. Okay. Let's then look at Zurich. Yeah.

Well, okay. Let's see here. Um, oh, the okay. Oh, nope. Okay.

Well, what okay. Okay. This is a map of Zurich around in the 16th century. It's a little, uh looks a little faded there. Um, sorry. But if you look at it, one of the one of the highlights is this big church, the Großmonster, which simply means the big minister or the big church. Um, and it was the largest church in, in Zurich. Zurich did not have a bishop. So this is not a cathedral. This is just a big church. Uh, Zurich was under the Bishop of Constance, uh, as was much of Switzerland, not quite all of it but much of Switzerland. And that plays into the whole thing.

All right. Now, let's go to the next one. Ulrich Zwingli. Uh, Ulrich Zwingli was born in 1484. He died in 1531, so he didn't have a very long life. He was born in St. Gallen, which is a area to the east of Zurich, uh, where his father was a local magistrate. And he studied at the universities of Vienna and Basel.

And he was he started out as an Erasmian. Erasmus was his role model. Erasmus was his hero. Uh, he learned he was learned it in Latin and Greek. In fact, he was so good at Greek that he memorized Paul's epistles in Greek, Greek. That's quite an accomplishment. Uh, he was ordained a priest in 1506. And around 1515, while he was serving as a priest in Glarus, he began to have doubts about the Mass, be uh, began to have doubts about the whole doctrine of transubstantiation.

He was a ver apparently, a very a very uh, they, they said, actually, his voice his the power of his voice was not strong, but that he s uh, his, his delivery, his spoken word, and so on, was very was very eloquent, and people liked to hear him preach. And so in, uh at the end of 1518, he was elected people's priest at the Großmonster in Zurich. And, uh, Gro a place like the Großmonster what's that?

Oh, you're trying to oh, trying to hear me say. Uh, uh, a place like the Großmonster had a number of priests who were called canons. And they had the they had the responsibility or the power, the privilege to elect this person who's known as the people's priest. And his job was to preach. He was a preacher. And so they were gonna be looking for someone who could do a good job. And they heard about Zwingli, and he was invited there. And he preached his, um, um and the other thing I should just note is that, as I mentioned, Zurich had no bishop. Uh, technically, bishops were supposed to do, do these kinds of appointments and so on, approve these appointments.

But in reality, for quite a long time in Zurich, it was the city council that approved the appointments. And so you already have a situation in Zurich, even while it's Catholic, in which the, the civil government really has quite a bit of say in what goes on in the church in Zurich. Okay? That's kind of a given.

Um, Zwingli preached his first sermon on January 1st, 1519. And in the Catholic church, um, you have assigned readings. Every Sunday, there's a particular gospel that's read, a particular epistle that's read, and a section and so on, srip uh, something from the Psalms, the Old Testament, and they're read. And they're oftentimes little s little short passages. But and typically speaking, normally speaking, that, that is what the preacher was to preach on. But Zwingli abandoned that idea and began to preach through the Gospel of Matthew.

Okay? With his Greek New Testament there on the podium. Now, he wasn't reading it to the people in Greek. He was kind of reading it and, you know, using it as a reference point and kinda translating it on the run. Okay? In 1519. This is before Luther's German New Testament came out in 1522. All right?

Uh, he's a very bright, smart man, a very talented person. And in his preaching, he began to raise questions about particular practices in the Roman Catholic Church. He warned people against praying to the Virgin Mary, to venerating saints, um, and saying the rosary, all, uh, acts of Catholic piety.

And when Luther came on the scene, um, and began to criticize the papacy, um, Zwingli supported that. Uh, he also, uh, like Luther, preached against indulgences 'cause there were indulgent, uh, preachers circulating among the Swiss cantons also. And he attacked clerical immorality.

Um, which is really ironic because, uh, he had had numerous affairs with women back in Glarus when he was a priest in Glarus. And of course, Roman Catholic priests weren't supposed to marry. They weren't supposed they're supposed to be celibate and so on.

But in Switzerland and many of the cantons in Switzerland, it was pretty much the general practice that priests had what they call, uh that, that the what the people colloquially refer to as their wives. Um, oftentimes, they were passed off as housekeepers and stuff like that. Uh, and the Bishop of Constance, uh, who was reform-minded and liked to would've liked to have dealt with that, wasn't really able to because it was such a prevalent practice that all he ended up doing was finding them for it.

Okay? So he would find priests. And, and it really wasn't it, it was just kinda an accepted thing. All right? Um, and, and it's also one of the things in which Zwingli, as he begins to think and as he reads the scriptures and so on, begins to see and it's also one of the things he lays into is the whole idea of clerical celibacy that priests can't marry. All right?

And he began to advocate reform in Zurich. And I would have to say, in these early days in these early years, it's pretty much just talk. He's preaching. Okay? He's warning against, um, um, things like praying to Mary. He's warning he's preaching against clerical celibacy.

Um, and he's advocating reform, but he's not advocating that anything practical happen yet. All right? And his idea is, "I preach this, and people's minds will be changed. And at some particular point, the city council will see that the, the s tide of opinion has shifted, and then they will implement the reforms." That's kind of his modus operandi. And it remains that throughout his career. And that's because he does it's not simply, um it's not simply being political. There may be a element to it. But Zwingli really saw the, the canton of Zurich as being and the and the s the, uh, s the, uh, citizenship of Zurich as being, um, being the same thing, the same community.

And he wanted to reform this whole community. And he believed the way to do it was to teach and then to persuade and then finally get the authorities on his side. He really believed that the that his whole his whole thing about, uh it's up to the city council to decide when changes are gonna be made. He thought that was the most orderly and sensible thing to do.

Um, and the other thing is that, um, the particularly in the early years, there's a lot of people who are still very attached to Roman Catholicism. There are priests in the city who are still very attached to Roman Catholicism. Technically, they're under the authority of the Bishop of Constance, who is not thrilled about all this thing. And then the other thing is that particularly in those cantons like, um, Uri and Schwartz, Schwartz and Glarus, which are Catholic strongholds, they get really antsy about any talk of reform. Uh, they identify it with Lutheranism and so on. And, um, they want th-that stopped. And we'll talk about that together. Okay. Let's look at s oh, uh, I should mention this, um th-th-that is Zwingli right here, a picture a portrait of him.

And this is a watercolor taken from a book that illustrates Heinrich Bollinger's Reformation Geschichte, his history of the church in Zurich. Um, and this is, uh there was around 1600, there was a person who, uh that book was actually not printed until the 19th century, but there were manuscript copies of it circulating around. And there was an artist who created one of these manuscripts, and he illustrated with a with these illustrations. And so they're illustrations from around 1600. So they're, they're not necessarily, um the they're more like kind of ideas rather than, than, uh, literal portraits of people. But that's showing Zwingli there preaching to the people.

Now, let's look at steps toward reform.

The first practical step toward refor-reform is the affair of the sausages, March 9th, 1522, in the home of Christopher Froschau. This is Christopher Froschau, the elder. And right here, um, is his residence. Uh, the part from that earlier map I showed you shows you the re where he lived in, in Zurich. He was a printer. And he's a very important person in the reform because he's printing all of, of Zwingli's tracts and other pro-evangelical things.

And in the C Roman Catholic Church, during Lent, which I guess is the period we're in right now until, till what? Sunday, when Easter comes, among Roman Catholics, they don't eat meat. They're supposed to fast from meat. And so the a group of men met together in Christopher Froschau's house and deliberately sat down and ate some sausages. And it was kind of a provocative act of, of, um, trying to push the whole idea of, of reform in Zurich. Now, Zwingli was there, but he did not eat any sausage.

Okay? He was there, but he did not eat any s-sausage. Christopher Schau Froschau was there. He ate sausage. One a-and two of Zwingli's main, um, uh, worker the people that worked with him, Leo Judd and Heinrich, uh, Oettinger, were there also. And they did eat sausages. And interestingly enough, there are several persons who later become part of the first baptizers.

Heinrich Ab-Eberle, Hans Ockenfuss, Klaus Hottinger, and Bartholomew Purr were at this affair of the sausages, and they also ate the sausage. All right? And this really caused a stink. This got back to the Hugo, the Bishop of Constance. He was upset about this. Um, some of the city council was concerned about it because this was really a breach of accepted practice and so on. Even some of the ones who, um, wanted to see changes happening were still very cautious because they had to think about those really pro-strong Catholic cantons that they had to kind of be concerned about. And then the other thing that happens is that Zwingli begins to argue for an end to clerical celibacy.

What many people didn't know, however, is that by 1522, he had already married Anna Reinhardt, um, a widow. He had been struck down in the p by the plague in 1519, and she nursed him back to health. And I guess something happened there. And so in 1522, he got married. But it was two years before that marriage was made public.

Okay? And again, it's because he's really trying hard not to upset the basket. All right? And, uh, Bishop Hugo ammonishes the Zurich Senate Council and ac uh, uh, to suppress heresy. And he also persuades the Swiss Diet, this meeting of representatives of the cantons, to adopt a mandate against evangelical preaching, against Lutheranism, against what the reform that Zwingli is advocating at this particular point.

And in August of 1522, Zwingli writes a little book. It's ca uh, in English, we refer to it as an apology. It's actually a defense of what he's doing. And at the end of this book, there's this and it's written in Latin. Okay? At the end of this book is this nice Latin poem written by a young man from a patrician family in Z in Zurich who had become a follower of Zwingli by the name of Konrad Grebbel.

Okay? Now, in January, uh 20 on January 29th, 1523, they hold the first Zurich disputation. And this was supposed to be something in which, um, you know, Zwingli and his, his, uh, fellow, um, clergy who supported him would kinda present their case. And then, uh, the Bishop of Constance, Hugo, was invited to send representatives to kinda argue the Catholic side of the case.

The all these disputations they're called disputations. Uh, some people s refer to them as debates. They're really not debates. Um, they might be framed that way. But Zwingli made sure in all these disputations that simply what it is, is him telling them what it what is what and the other people trying to respond. And then at the end of the debate, they decide the city council decides who won the debate. Guess who won the debate? Every time, Zwingli won the debate. All right? And it happens later on when he has several debates with Anna Baptist. He always wins the debate. The city council says, "Yeah, he, he won the debate." All right?

Um, and the Hugo wanted the bishop wanted Zwingli silenced. He wanted him to stop preaching. But the, uh, city council, uh, uh, agreed that Zwingli could continue to preach and that the rest of the city preachers should only preach according to the scripture.

Okay? Now but it's all talk. No change is happening. It's just all talk. It's all it's all preaching and so on. Nothing is happening. And the city council is trying to keep a lid on it. Zwingli's trying to keep a lid on it because he's very concerned about, about disorder and not having disorder. But some people can't be denied.

And there are spontaneous, unauthorized outbursts of iconoclasm. Iconoclasm means the destruction of images. Okay? And on September 13th, 1523, Lorenz Hockenruther, who later on becomes an Anna Baptist, all right, participates in the removal of images from the Frau Münster. And this is an illustration, uh, of that event.

And he is thrown in jail along with the other people. They're thrown they're put in prison. They're released a number, uh, number of days later. And on, um, September 23rd, 1523, uh, at Stadehofen Stadehofen, they tear down the cross. Most villages had a large standing cross in the center of the village and so on.

And, uh, some pro, um, Zwingli evangelical, uh, reform-minded people think, "Ay, it's time for this thing, this idol idolatrous thing to be taken down." And so they tear it down. And among those persons helping to tear it down, Lorenzo Hocken, uh, Ruth Rudner had been released. And so, uh, he didn't learn his lesson. He was right there helping along with it. And then also t uh, two other persons, Klaus Hottinger and Hans Ockenfuss, were also there. All three of these men later on became part of the baptizer movement. And the authorities cracked down on this, and they imprisoned them. And they also with Lorenzo Hocken Hocken, uh, Ruthner, they actually kicked him out of the canton.

They exiled him. Okay? And he made his way to, uh, I think where he he, he went to, um pr I th I think he went to Basel first and then s to St. Gallen. He'll show up here later.

Well, that's in so on the on the on the on the heels of this, okay, Zwingli and the city council, they they're trying to control the pace of the of how reform is happening or not happening. Um, and so they have another dispute disputation. And again, they invite the bishop to send representatives. And he's not having it. He's done with these people. He doesn't send any representatives.

Okay? Um, and they talk about images, and they talk about the Mass. And Zwingli publicly presents his theology of the Lord's Supper as a meal of remembrance. He does not believe in, in transubstantiation, the idea that when the priest elevates and blesses the bread and the wine, that they become physically the body and blood of Christ. He believes that they are they signify that. It's a meal of remembrance.

There's another person who's kind of int oh, here. Let me see. Oh, no. What happened here?

Let me st try that again. All right.

Oh, no. Okay. Not quite ready. All right. Okay. Um, in October of, um, 1523, October 23rd to 26th, they hold this second disputation. And as I said, the images and the Mass are part of it part of it.

Balthazar Hobbmeyer, who is a former Roman Catholic priest, is now a reformer above Switzerland in a German town called Walsratt. He's also there. He, he participates. And in the d in the in the discussion, he weighs in against images as being unscriptual. And then we have this Konrad Grebbel speaking up.

Okay? Zwingli has, has presented the case for the Lord's Supper as being a meal of remembrance. But in Zurich, they are still following the Mass. They're still they have made no changes. They're i-if you looked at it, uh, you would think this is still a Catholic city by what they're practicing. All right? So Konrad Grebbel s urges the clergy urges Zwingli to give the clergy instructions as how to stop, as he calls as he refers to it, the abomination of the Mass. How are we going to, uh, tell the clergy, "Okay, you said that the Mass is idolatry. You said that it's a meal of remembrance. Well, how are the clergy now to proceed?" And Zwingli replies that changes to the observance of the Lord's Supper should be decided by the city council.

And there's another young man there, a Catholic a priest in a village nearby called Honig. And he says to Zur to, to Zwingli, "You have no authority to place the decision in my Lord's hands, for the decision is already made. The Spirit of God decides." Now, for that bold statement, Stumpf was exiled from Zurich. He was kicked out by the end of the year.

The interesting thing is he starts out as being kind of part there. And so there seems there there's this l this group, this circle of radicals who are listening to Zwingli, and they are agreeing with Zwi what Zwingli's saying, but they're wondering, "When's this going to happen?

We're still acting as though we're Catholics." Okay? And Stumpf is one of those. Grebbel is one of them. Um, and, uh, and Zwingli's response was, um, they sh the clergy should continue to preach against images and the Mass, but no change in practice.

This is a terribly discouraging thing happening. Now, at the same time, okay, that this pre Zwingli and Judd and some other, uh, evangelical reform-minded preachers are teaching and so on, there also forms these Bible study groups in the city of Zurich.

And one of them is led by Zwingli.

And I'll go to the next one 'cause it kinda shows you. This, again, is an image from that thing. Um, one of them is led by Zwingli. And this is kind of his little group of fellow clergy who are very learned.

And, um, one of the things you have to keep in mind - I'm gonna go back here - is that Luther translated the New Testament into German and was published in September of 1522. And then it was reprinted many in bet different times at many different places.

Okay? Zwingli took Luther's New Testament, and he reworked it because it was in it was in the German that Luther spoke, which is up in the northern part of Germany. Swiss German is somewhat of a different animal. And so Zwingli revises the 1522. And in 1524, Froschau prints the Zurich New Testament. And so now this New Testament and in 1522, there are lots of copies probably of Luther's translating circling around. But in 1524, in the midst of this whole thing, Froschau prints this New Testament, becomes much more available. And, you know, there are there are a few people that can read Latin and Hebrew and Greek.

Okay? But there are a lot more people, though it's still a minority at this point in time, who can read their native language, can read German. And so all of a sudden, the scriptures become much more available to more people with the uh, and particularly the New Testament. All right?

Um, and then, um, there's this Bible study group that meets every morning in the Gross Münster with Zwingli and Judd Micronius and some other very learned men, men who can read Hebrew, who can read Greek, who can read Latin.

And they sit down together, and they start in Genesis, and they work their way all the way from Genesis up to the end of the Prophets. Okay? And they sit down. Uh, Zwingli liked he was very fluent in Greek. And the Bible that Old Testament he preferred was the Septuagint. There were a couple other persons there who knew Hebrew. There were some who knew Latin. And so they would read these texts, and they would discuss them. And they would discuss, "Well, how would you do this in German? How would you explain this? What's this mean?" and so on. They did that every day in the mornings.

Okay? And this laid the groundwork for the Zurich translation of okay, that's the New Testament. All right. Uh, do I miss some oh, no. Okay. No, that's, that's not the New Testament. That's the Pentateuch. In 1525, they came out with the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Later that year, they came out with the and these are, are printed in separate parts. There are five different parts of the Old Testament. Came out with the historical books, the poetic books. And then finally, in 1529, they came out with the Prophets.

This is the Prophets. This is and they were all printed by Froschau. Okay? He pr he's printing all these. So the Old Testament comes out in increments. Okay? And people were buying these things up. And then what happened is that some people, um, they're all printed to the same size. Okay? So some people put these together. And here, by 1529, you can have a whole Bible.

All right? Now, this predates this predates Luther's translation of the whole Bible by five years. He doesn't come out with one, the whole Bible, until 1534. Okay? Um, and then in 1530, Froschau prints a copy of the whole Bible in what is referred to as, um I think it's a Quattro.

Um, over here, um, for display afterwards, uh, is a 1545 Froschau Bible that a friend loaned me for this evening. And that is a folio. Okay? And a folio is one sheet of paper that would have gone into a printing press that is folded in half, and it has four pages. Okay? You can fo you can take that same sheet and fold it again, and it gives you eight pages. Okay? I think that's the size of the, the 1531 Bible. And then in 1530 I mean, 1530 Bible. Then in 1531, um, he p Froschau printed a deluxe version with all kinds of woodcuts. And it's a folio, and it's a beautiful, uh, piece of workmanship.

And this is a beautiful piece of workmanship too. It's 1545. It's 14 years later. I just saw one of those sell a 1531 Froschau Bible sell in November for $75,000.

That's more money than I'd hate to spend on a book. But, um, but anyhow, the saw the man carry it out under his arm. All right. Um, now, where was I? Okay. So what I'm trying to say is that, that they're working on translating this Bible. And the more Bible comes out in German, more and more people can read it. Okay?

But, uh, the Apocrypha comes out, um, in 1529. And then 1531, this is the title page of the first full folio Bible of 1531. All right. Now, but Zwingli's little study group was not the only study group in Zurich. There were other ones. There was a study group led by a man by the name of Andreas, um, Kasselberger. And he's a bookseller in Zurich. He has a bookshop. He sells books.

And he's conducting a Bible study as early as 1522. And he's focusing in on studying Paul's epistles. And he's probably s using Luther's German New Testament. Okay? This is not as highly this set of people are not as highly educated. They seem to be literate. Maybe not literate. Okay? Maybe not literate.

But at least what, what normally seems to happen is that if whoever is literate reads the text, and then they talk about it. And now, there's probably more than one. Most of them are probably literate and so on and who are involved in this. But some of them might not be. All right?

And Kasselberg is what they call the reader. He's the one who reads, and he kinda leads the discussion. All right? And Heinrich Eberle is there. Lorenzo Hockenruter is there until he gets kicked out of Zurich. And another person by the name of Bartholomew Pure is involved in Kasselberg's, um, study group, Bible study group. These all become anabaptists later on.

Okay? And then there seems to be another study group that kind of revolves around Felix Muntz and Konrad Grebbel. And these two men are well-educated. Felix I think Felix Muntz can read Hebrew. Um, Konrad Grebbel reads Latin and Greek and so on. And th-the ha the thing that's handy about that is if you can read Greek, if you can read Hebrew, okay, then the, the scriptures are available to you. Or even if you read Latin, you can read the Vulgate. Okay? But in these early years, until 1529, the whole Old Testament is not available to everybody.

Okay? The New Testament is. All right? And I think that's significant. All right? Now, that takes us then to I'm not quite ready for that, but we'll stop there. That takes us then to this small group pr this group, uh, this Bible study group that revolves around Kasselberg, the group that c this group of young, fairly well-educated people that revolves around Felix Muntz and Konrad Grebbel are becoming increasingly impatient with Zwingli's thing of just teaching, preaching, and then waiting for the city council's side when they're going to implement any changes.

And, you know, when people get frustrated, they get more, how should we say, uh, impatient, uh, less willing to kinda just go along with things. They kinda get it up to there. And I think that's what is happening by 1524. Konrad Grebbel, in a letter to Thomas Münster on September 5th, 1524, says that they, they number no more than 20 persons there in the city of Zurich.

Okay? So it's a very small group of radicals. On Easter Sunday, 1524, William Rubelin, a reform-minded, uh, priest - he's still technically a Catholic priest - at the little village of Weidekon there in Kanton (Zurich) preaches against infant baptism. As he's reading the scriptures and so on, he doesn't see anything there that says that infants should be baptized.

All right? And then on June 29th, 1524, Ludwig Härsler, another priest who had moved to Zurich to participate in Zwingli's Reformation, a man very learned in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew - he actually, at the second disputation in October of 1523, was the person who kept notes of the whole thing.

All right? - he writes, "Attract against infant baptism." Now, the first stages here are not advocating believers' baptism. They're simply writing against infant baptism. And so you have persons who hear these, these sermons, read these tracts, and so on, and decide that they're not going to get their babies baptized. They're not gonna baptize their infants.

All right? But the city council Zwingli and the city council are just sort of plodding along, not doing anything, not making any changes, and so on. And this group of radicals, um, con uh, they, um Thomas Münster has written a couple of tracts.

And they, uh, they get access to these tracts. They read them. They see some things in them that s they seem to think, "Okay. We can agree with that," and so on. And he makes some intimation that, um, not for believers' baptism, but that you should s maybe you should just halt the practice of infant baptism. He calls that into question. And so in Septe on September 5th, 1524, they write Thomas Münster a letter.

Okay? And it's quite a long letter, actually. And they ta and, and basically what they're doing is they're reaching out to see if there's some like-minded persons out there. They actually write another letter, which is not, uh is not still around, to they refer to a letter that they wrote to On-Andreas, um I mean, to yeah, to Karlstadt. Uh, they also talk about writing a letter to Luther. Now, they don't expect Luther to agree with them. They just think they ought to write a letter to Luther and set him straight. Again, that letter is not around anymore either.

All right? But they're hoping that Münster will be receptive to what they are saying. This is an image of the first page of the letter. And then on the other side is the page, uh, uh, uh the last page of the letter. And this letter is I think it's in the archives in St. Gallen. Um, but let me see here. One oops. Let's go back.

All right. Here we are. Okay. Right up here, Konrad Grebbel, Andreas Kasselberg, Felix Muntz, John Hockenfuss, Bartholomew Pure, and Henry Eberle. These are the three these are the men who ha are writing this letter to, um, to Münster. Now, Konrad Grebbel is probably from the language of when he refers to himself in the letter, uh, he's probably the one who's actually writing it. But it's a joint project. Okay? And let's look at it.

First of all, he goes on to say that, uh, "Just as our forefathers fell away from the true God and from the one true common divine word, from the divine institutions, from Christian love and life, and lived without God's law and gospel in human, useless, unchristian customs and ceremonies," that's talking about the Catholic Church. Okay? And everything that kinda went on before that. "And aspect to attain salvation therein, yet fell far ashore of it. As the evangelical preachers have declared and to some extent are still declaring, so today every man wants to be saved by superficial faith, without fruits of faith, without baptism of trial and probation, without love and hope, without right Christian practices, and wants to perti persist in all the old manner of personal vices and in the common ritualistic and anti-Christian custom of baptism and the Lord's Supper."

And that's he's talking about the Mass. He's talking about infant bapti they're talking about the Mass. They're talking about the infant baptism. But they're also talking about the fact that they don't see any discernible change in people's lives.

And that's a big issue here. All right? And part of the reason they're writing to Münster is that he has a like concern. He's very critical of Luther because he doesn't see that Luther's Reformation has made anybody better.

Okay? That's what happens when you think it's by faith alone. All right? And the other thing that h they are very insistent about I'm not gonna read this whole thing. But the other thing that they're very insistent about is that nothing but the pure, unadulterated Word of God, the scriptures. If it's not there, we don't have it. In fact, this is the letter in which they, uh, they weigh in about singing. 'Cause Münster has basically taken the Mass and translated it to German and everything and has kept the chants and so on like this. And they take him to test for that. He said, "Where do you find that in the Bible?" And it's very interesting.

You know the verse that says, um, "Speak to one another in hymns, psalms, and spiritual psalms"? They take that very literally. They said it didn't say sing. It said speak. All right? So there you are, you know. Uh, that, that idea didn't prevail. Maybe that's an excessive literalism, um, there. But, um, okay.

The next thing that they, uh, talk about is that the Lord's Supper is to be a meal of remembrance. And they said, "You don't take any special bread, not any special cup, anything like this. A common cup will I mean, a ordinary cup will do. Ordinary bread will do." And the fact they, they feel so all this kinda special thing with the chalices and the special bread and everything kinda makes this thing makes sort of a superstitious thing about it. And they said they're not having any of that. All right? It's a meal of remembrance. Okay? But I also want you to notice here what they say. "It is to show us that we are truly one bread and one body and that we and we and wish to be true brethren with one another."

That's a very early anabaptist concept that right there at the beginning is there. Okay? That the, the Lord's Supper represents the unity of faith. And then interestingly enough, the other thing that come up is the rule of Matthew 8 of Matthew 18, rule of Christ in Matthew 18. All right? They talk about disciplining erring people, refusing communion to them if they're living unrepented lives. Okay? Talking about admonishing in the presence of three witnesses in the church. All right? Um, uh, very much again, an, uh, practice, an idea that can that is carried on into early anabaptism.

And then we have the, uh, baptism in the state of children. One of the things that depending on your theology of baptism, Roman Catholics believed that baptism is what took care of original sin and it's what made you a Christian. Luther's idea was not too far from that. He said, you know, they sort of have faith. You know, he believed they had faith and that even though you couldn't see it or hear it, they couldn't understand and stuff like that and that there was some, some, uh, uh, salvific, um, um, um, character to baptism. Zwingli develops this idea of, of infant baptism incorporating one into the covenant of God's people. And he makes this analogy, uh, between circumcision in the Old Testament and infant baptism.

And that's one of the arguments he comes up with later on, uh, you know, and several months later on where he argues that, you know, in the Old Covenant, they circumcised young they circumcised infants. Baptism is, is, um, correlates with that. And so that's the justific one of his justifications for infant baptis baptism.

And then interestingly enough, they say, "Moreover, the gospel and its inherence are not to be protected by the sword, nor are they thus to protect themselves, which, as we learned from our brother, is thy opinion." And they were wrong about that. Okay? They, they thought, uh, because Münster was right at that particular point while they were writing this letter ready to join the peasants' revolt and lead and become a leader in the peasants' revolt. But they didn't know that. They assumed that, uh, he agreed with them. And they didn't. Um, "True Christian believers are sheep among mules, sheeps for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anguish and affliction than a quitting down. Neither do they use world worldly sword or war since all killing has ceased with them."

Them. Okay? So there we have this is the letter to Münster. They're writing in 1524. So you can see already that there's some ideas. Now, they're not fully fleshed out. And of course, it's only one letter. The sources can get a little sketchy for this period of time and so on. But they continue in, in decen this is in September. Uh, historians doubt that this letter ever got to Münster because they sent it up to Mulhausen. He wasn't there anymore. He had left. Um, and it's in the collections of, of, um, Konrad Grebbel's f brother-in-law, um, uh, Valadin.

And, um, they think that either somehow got m it got there somehow or another or that, that, um, Grebbel made a second copy and sent it to, to Valadin for his information. There's most of the correspondence of Grebbel's correspondence is with his brother-in-law over the years who remained a very stout ally of Zwingli.

In December of 1524, there's a number of conversations that Zwingli and Judd and Mykonias have with these this group of young radicals. And they are pushing them to, you know, make changes. Uh, they're trying to persuade them about believers' bapti by this time, they've moved to the point of believers' baptism, not just not baptizing infants but baptizing upon confession of faith. I think did I I did have a slide for that. I think I must have skipped it. All right?

Um, and, and of course, um, they get no quarter. And, um all right. Okay. Well, there we are.

All right. Okay. And in December of 1524, Felix Muntz and Felix Muntz does not show up very often in the record bef-before this. I think once or twice. But he's obviously part of the whole thing. Um, and he actually gives the first clearest the, the clearest rationale early on about, uh, uh, infant baptism and believers' baptism. He says, "Christ did not teach infant baptism. And the apostles did not practice it. But in accord with the true meaning of baptism, only those should be baptized who reform, take on a new life, lay aside sins, are buried with Christ and rise with him in newness of life." Now, he's talking there about the new birth.

And one of the things that's really interesting is this idea of taking on new life, laying aside sins. Zwingli and company read that statement as a claim on the part of the anabaptist that they claim to lead a sinless life.

All right? That's, that's how they uh, there are a number of references to it that Zwingli makes to it. And that's the claim. That's how he reads a statement like this. "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved as was done by Peter as we have it in the Acts of the Apostles. That forgiveness of sin in his in Christ's name should be given to everyone who, believing in his name, should do righteous works from a changed heart. They were therefore poured over with water." I put that poured over there with water in there purposely. It's there. I mean, it's part of the text. I just want you to understand the way in which they baptized.

They did it by pouring. All right? Okay. Just in case you're wondering. All right? Okay. Huh? I hope that helps you out sometime. All right? Um, uh, "They were therefore poured over with water," meaning that just as they were cleansed within by the coming of the Holy Spirit, so they were also poured over with water externally to signify for the inward cleansing and dying to sin. And again, it's this idea that the inward cleansing happens and then bap the external water baptism signifies that. Okay? It's a proclamation of that. All right? "To apply such things to children is without any and against all scriptures." All right?

Well, the Zurich City Council Zwingli were not going to allow that to stand. And so they wanted to bring this thing to a head. And they called for a disputation with the advocates of believers' baptism on January 17th, 1525. And again, this is an illustration from that, um from Bollinger's, uh, church history, um, illustrating that event. And there is the only report about this event is from Bollinger's church history. And, you know, he actually gives a generally fair explanation of what these guys are saying. "Baptism should be given to believers to whom the gospel has previously been preached, who have understood it and who have therefore upon requested baptism for themselves, killing the old Adam, desire to live a new life because infants know nothing of all this.

Baptism does not apply to them." That's their argument at this dis disputation. Now, the purpose of the disputation is to hear the a quote technically, hear both sides and decide, well, who's in the right. Guess who's in the right?

Zwingli's in the right. Okay? The city council decides Zwingli's in the right. Now, um, Bollinger d also tells us what Zwingli's arguments are. Um, several months down the road, he wrote a book on baptism, uh, on baptism, um, and, uh, rebaptism. And baptism of infants is the title in English. And it's essentially a harang.

Um, he, he his main argument is, "These are arrogant, rebellious young men who are trying to disrupt things. And they need to be quiet and listen to their elders." Okay? That's or, or listen to me and do what the city council says.