The Protestant Reformation was a case of arrested development. It was like the exodus from the Egyptian bondage. There was a long lingering in the wilderness before the day dawned with full religious liberty. Henry Melville King says:
The absolute supremacy of the word of God, the spiritual nature of the Christian church, the Christian ordinances for believing souls, the divorce of Church and State, full, unrestricted religious freedom for every man, these essential truths of the gospel of Christ found no room at the inn of the sixteenth century, and were thrust aside into the manger ... the inn was not open for it, but the manger was. The principle of religious liberty did not fail to get born.
The Anabaptists of Europe kept alive the ideals of religious liberty. They sought to carry out the principles of the Protestant Reformation to its scriptural and logical conclusion. Many, called by this name, had little in common with the movement which now bears the Baptist name. The actions of the fanatics under Münzer have been cited since Williams’ day as an argument against his principles. Münzer, who “never submitted to, nor administered rebaptism, who persisted in baptizing infants, and who sought to set up the kingdom of Christ by carnal warfare, was not correctly classed.” Cornelius, Roman Catholic historian of the Münzer uprising, shows that the Anabaptists repudiated the actions of this fanatic.
The only crime of which they (the Baptists) were accused as a body by their contemporaries, and which is substantiated by evidence, the crime for which they were inhumanly persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike, and for which they went cheerfully and in large numbers to death by drowning or the stake, was the crime of advocating soul-liberty. They claimed the right to interpret the Scriptures for themselves. They demanded freedom of faith and worship for all men. They apprehended the sublime doctrine of civil and religious liberty, and they were the only men who did apprehend it.
Most of the creeds and confessions of the Reformation gave to the magistrate a coercive power in religion, and included a curse for the despised Baptists. Luther, in the early years of his Reformation work, said:
No one can command or ought to command the soul except God, who alone can show it the way to heaven. It is futile and impossible to command, or by force to compel any man’s belief. Heresy is a spiritual thing, which no iron can hew down, no fire burn, no water drown... Whenever the temporal power presumes to legislate for the soul, it encroaches.
Luther, when he was successful, turned his back upon this noble utterance and compromised with error. He stopped short of full victory and failed to secure the “full splendor of a complete triumph.” He wrote differently in after days:
Since it is not good that in one parish the people should be exposed to contradictory preaching, he (the magistrate) should order to be silent whatever does not consist with the Scriptures.
Thus the civil ruler was made the final judge of truth and given power to suppress what he would condemn. This was a case of tyranny changing hands. Luther wrote to Menius and Myconius in 1530:
I am pleased that you intend to publish a book against the Anabaptists as soon as possible. Since they are not only blasphemous but also seditious men, let the sword exercise its rights over them, for it is the will of God, that he shall have judgment who resisteth the power.