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Direct Answer Dean suggests the ministers believed spiritual danger increases when life is easy, so they used Martyrs’ Mirror to anchor identity and prepare for endurance before pressure arrived. The transcript points to “subtle” dangers like materialism, individualism, and loss of peoplehood—threats that don’t look like persecution but still dissolve faith.

Support from Transcript:

• In 1745, six ministers wrote to Dutch leaders asking help to translate Martyrs’ Mirror into German.
• Roth says it seems “odd” because persecution themes were “hardly relevant” since they lived “in freedom of conscience and…peace and liberty.”
• Dean explains their motive: “We’ve got to get a hold of us as a people…we have to identify ourselves as a people.”
• He ties it to Van Braght’s burden: “these times are so easy and fat,” and thus spiritually dangerous.
• Dean emphasizes literature’s role: without such writings, later revival and identity could be lost (he references Hutterite literature preserving later revival).