24 Multiple forces at work
Multiple forces at work The Protestant Reformation began with John Wycliffe in England in the 1300’s and reached its climax 200 years later with Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox. During those 200 years there were multiple, almost numberless, forces at work. In the religious, political, and social upheaval of that period, every kind of force imaginable was pulling at the people. Some of those forces were central to the Reformation, and some of them had nothing to do with the Reformation-nor with the Christian religion. But, by their very existence, even those forces had an impact on all that went on.
There were some who had gone by a multitude of names, and had been scattered all over Europe and the Middle East ever since apostolic times. In earlier days they had been called Montanists, Donatists, and Novationists. Sometimes they had been called by such names as Bogomiles, or Philipopolitans, depending on where they were located. In Europe, at the time of the Reformation, they were more often called Waldensians, Albigenses, or Anabaptists.
They had Bibles, but they were scarce and expensive, and with Bibles in such short supply, it was inevitable they would entertain some error, both in doctrine and practice.The visible church has never been entirely free from error, not even in the apostolic age. That is why Paul wrote all those epistles. He was correcting errors in the churches of that day. But even though there were many things about which they were unsure, there were a few points on which the main body of the church never erred.
Like the Donatists in Augustine’s day, they looked to Jesus Christ as their only Savior, and the Bible as their only authority. They defended a personal, spiritual religion, as opposed to any religion forced on them by the authorities. They believed in the resurrection of the dead, and judgment to come, and heaven and hell. And they would suffer themselves to be killed, rather than surrender their believers’ baptism for infant baptism. Catholics and Protestants alike saw to it they got the opportunity to do just that.
God will always have a people who remain faithful to the truth of the Bible. Regardless of how they often erred on other points, on those simple points the true church has been the same in every day and age. And like the martyrs who suffered at the hands of Augustine, it was those principles that prompted them to suffer every kind of cruelty, every kind of painful death-at the hands of Catholics and Protestants alike-rather than deny their Maker. Those are the people through which our Primitive Baptists of this day trace our heritage.
There were men like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, John Huss, and Balthasar Hubmaier. Those were men of noble character, and the purest of motives. They were determined to defend and promote true religion, and in their own spheres of influence they were very successful. Most of them paid with their lives. At the other extreme there were men like Thomas Munzer, who was either insane or unspeakably evil. He went, “in 1533, to Munster, in Westphalia, converted large numbers to his views, overturned the city government, and set up what he called the Kingdom of New Zion, and intended to proceed to the conquest of the world” (Hassell pg 503). As many as 50 people a day were beheaded in the bloodletting that followed. Note:Munzerwas the name of the man;Munsterwas the name of the town.
There were those, such as the German princes, and King Henry VIII of England, whose only interest was political. King Henry needed a male heir to continue his dynasty. His wife, Catherine of Aragon, had not been able to deliver that heir, and he was annoyed at the pope for refusing him permission to divorce her and marry Anne Boleyn. He wanted the pope out of his way, and out of English politics. In 1534, he broke with Rome, declared himself the head of the Church of England, and launched the Reformation in England. The German princes wanted the same thing. They wanted the Pope out of German politics. That was why they defended Martin Luther. He was their weapon against the Pope. With their help Luther overthrew the power of the Pope, and established the Lutheran Church as the state church in Germany. The princes protected him, and made him their puppet. If Luther thought he was the real power in Germany, he realized his mistake, when he was totally unable to restrain the princes in their atrocities against the peasants in the Peasants’ War. When he discovered he could not restrain them, he urged them on. That same period was a time of greatly increased occult activity. In the dark of the night, occultists met in secluded places to perform their dark arts, their Black Sabbath, or Black Mass, to invoke Satan, and to engage in the most licentious, and immoral acts. The superstition of the age fueled that kind of conduct.
Occultists performing their disgraceful practices in the woods, in the dark of the night, had not the slightest connection with those Christians who were wrangling among themselves. They were not, in any way, connected with the Catholics, the Reformers, nor with the Anabaptists. And yet, it was the constant practice, both of the Catholics and the Reformers, to lump those who were neither Catholics, nor Protestants into one class, and call them all either Waldensians, or Anabaptists. If you were neither a Catholic, nor a Protestant, you must be a Waldensian, an Anabaptist. And you must share a common condemnation with all others-of whatever stripe-who would not submit to one or the other authority.
More than that, both Catholics and Protestants lumped those humble Waldensians and Anabaptists together with occult-ists engaged in every kind of witchcraft and immorality, and called them allAnabaptists. That is the reason the Protestants are able to come up with so many documents indicating the Anabaptists and Walden-sians were often unsound in the faith. They called anybody with whom they disagreed an Anabaptist. Pedobaptists are still doing that. They know better, but they cannot come up with any better way to slander those who remained faithful to the Bible and to their Lord.
Many of those whom present day Pedobaptists call Anabap-tists could hardly be thought of as any kind of Christians. And if some of them were not actually insane, they had, at least, been driven to madness by the brutal treatment they had received from those in power.
One instance of this misnaming of people is the insistence by Protestants that the Thomas Munzer we mentioned a moment ago was an Anabaptist. Munzer had never been an Anabaptist, but in the turmoil of the time, and considering how many Anabaptists there were in Germany at the time, and considering how oppressed they had been, it was inevitable that some few Anabaptists would be caught up in the movement.
Munzer was himself a Lutheran. At least, Lutheran infant baptism was the only baptism he ever received. But Luther, and the Lutheran ministry repudiated his work as vigorously as the Anabaptists did.
It would be as unfair to charge the Lutherans with his conduct as it is to charge the Anabaptists. And yet, from that day until this, Protestants have consistently loaded him on the Anabaptists. Many of them even pretend the Baptists, as a people, had their origin with Munzer and the tragedy at Munster, in Westphalia.
They know better, but they cannot find any instance in history, when the Baptists, by whatever name, have waged armed war against those they could not convert. Catholics and Protestants did that; the Baptists never have. And because they cannot cite any valid instance, they have pressed the Munster Rebellion into service.
Anabaptistmeansre-baptizer. The Anabaptists, and others of the same opinion, had always denied they were actuallyAnabaptists; they did not re-baptize anybody. They insisted they only baptized them; the first ritual was not really baptism. But it was this calling anybody and everybody anAnabap-tistthat made Baptists ashamed of the name. The practice became so much a part of the language, the Baptists began to vigorously reject the name. If you spend any time at all studying the documents of that time, especially Baptist documents from the 1600’s, you will find them repeatedly denying they wereAnabaptists.
They were rejecting the tag their adversaries had hung on them; they were not denying they were the descendants of those faithful Anabaptists, Waldensians, Albigenses, etc. who had kept the faith all during the dark days of oppression. In addition to all the others, there were the leading Reformers, men like Martin Luther and John Calvin. An attitude of fairness requires that we give theseReformersthe benefit of the doubt. It appears fairly certain that-at the beginning of their ministries-many of them were honest and sincere. They were appalled at the corruption and immorality that had swallowed up the Catholic religion, and they were looking for something better.