The pendulum of
religious thought, set in free swing, vibrated from the one extreme of
authority to the opposite extreme of license, going as far beyond Luther
as he had gone beyond Rome. There arose a sect to which was given the
name of Anabaptists, from its rejection of infant baptism, a sect with a
strange history, which it now falls to us to relate.
The new movement, indeed, was not confined to matters of religion. The
idea of freedom from authority once set afloat, quickly went further
than its advocates intended. If men were to have liberty of thought, why
should they not have liberty of action? So argued the peasantry, and not
without the best of reasons, for they were pitifully oppressed by the
nobility, weighed down with feudal exactions to support the luxury of
the higher classes, their crops destroyed by the horses and dogs of
hunting-parties, their families ill-treated and insulted by the
men-at-arms who were maintained at their expense, their flight from
tyranny to the freedom of the cities prohibited by nobles and citizens
alike, everywhere enslaved, everywhere despised, it is no wonder they
joined with gladness in the revolutionary sentiment and made a vigorous
demand for political liberty.
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