'How was that possible in so short a time, doctor?' asked the host. 'The adherents of the Augsburg confession were certainly very powerful as yet, in the city, as the papists also were.'

'The terrible Matthias,' replied the doctor, 'had sent circulars through the neighborhood and collected all the anabaptists at Munster. Consequently, all the low rabble, who had nothing at home to lose, rushed into the poor city, and last night, taking possession of the arsenal and town house, they set fire to the cloisters of Mauritius. They ran, as if possessed, howling through the streets with naked swords, crying, 'Repent and be baptised!' and 'Depart ye Godless!' Neither condition, age, nor sex availed; delicate women, the sick and dying, were all mercilessly thrust out at the gates of their native city unless they would profess the heretical, heathenish worship. The choice between death, flight, and apostacy, only remained, even to me; and as I thought it better to be useful through the preaching of the word to honest christians than through martyrdom in the paws of such raging brutes, I shook the dust from my feet and escaped,--and God must judge.'

'I am very sorry for you,' cried Alf, much agitated: 'because you have such a venerable appearance, and doubtless think yourself truly faithful, though you wander in darkness. Nevertheless, it is a culpable stubbornness in you Lutherans, to struggle so violently against the new doctrines, which have the right and the holy scriptures so clearly on their side. Has not our Lord and Savior expressly commanded his Apostles--'Go ye into all the world and teach all people and baptize them?' So therefore, the teaching must precede the baptism, according to Christ's own words. How dare you, then, presume to baptize new born children who can know nothing of God?'

'What, another anabaptist!' grumbled the host, with a discontented glance at the speaker; and the worthy doctor directed his eyes, full of heartfelt sorrow, upon the youth, and sighed--'Another lamb gone astray from the flock, whom I cannot lead back to the protecting fold. This it is, that makes me sad.'

'You have not answered my question,' said Alf, with the triumph of the controversialist.

'Of what advantage is it to show the way to the blind, who will not see it?' cried the doctor: 'I could answer you, that Christ's apostles could only baptize adults, because those only came over to christianity at first; but that, at a later period, the burning zeal of the great Augustine placed near the heart of the christian fathers the duty of consecrating their children to Christ through the holy baptism into the covenant, and thereby to deliver them from the original sin and impart to them the redemption through Christ, before peradventure they should be snatched away in their tender youth by a premature death. Would to God that this schism was the only one that your companions in your mistaken faith defend with such terrible obstinacy and fierceness. You have yet other dogmas which you advance, sufficient to convert our earth, God's beautiful temple, into a den of murderers. Your community of goods, your equality of rank, your struggle against secular authority, lead directly to lawless confusion, robbery, murder, and unhappy revolution.'

'Even the best opinions may be misconstrued,' replied Alf, angrily. 'The gospel looks upon all men as equal. The distinctions made among them by birth, rank, and wealth, are contrary to its spirit. Christians who possess the doctrines of God as precepts, and take his spirit for their guide, need no power that destroys religious liberty without authority. They are able to govern themselves by the word of God, and the Holy Spirit will always guide them, that they stumble not in the paths in which they are led by their faith.'

'Unhappy, infatuated youth!' cried the doctor, with a majestic prophetic look and tone. 'Go now into the unfortunate city, and behold how the anabaptist spirit has conducted your companions to robbery, incendiarism and murder, in the smoking ruins of the cloister, and in the bleeding bodies which strew the highways! If this horrible spectacle be not enough to move your heart, think of the words which in this sad hour I address to you in the name of that God whom your proceedings profane. These crimes will be but the beginning of your afflictions. Your equality will yet be to you but equality of misery--your community of goods will bring you to beggary. Instead of the magistracy which you now drive away, miscreants will rise up from the midst of you, and with bloody hands rend your own entrails, until the wrath of a long suffering God finally awakes, until the avenger appears, and you all perish in one common ruin.'

'There come horsemen galloping,' cried the doctor's attendant, who was standing at the window with his cup; 'and, if I see rightly, they bear our lord bishop's colors. It might be well for me to go back to the city.'

'The bishop's riders!' sighed the doctor. 'It often happens that the avenger only lingers near; but this time the Lord in his anger has given him wings.'