A divine ordinance was a divine ordinance, and that was all there was to it.
And so they refused to enlist and refused to carry arms and in case they were arrested for their pacifism (for that is what their enemies called this sort of applied Christianity) they went willingly forth to meet their fate and recited Matthew xxvi: 52 until death made an end to their suffering.
But anti-militarism was only a small detail in their program of queerness. Jesus had preached that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Caesar were two entirely different entities and could not and should not be reconciled. Very well. These words were clear. Henceforth all good Anabaptists carefully abstained from taking part in their country’s government, refused to hold public office and spent the time which other people wasted upon politics, reading and studying the holy scriptures.
Jesus had cautioned his disciples against unseemly quarrels and the Anabaptists would rather lose their rightful possessions than submit a difference of opinion to a law court.
There were several other points which set these peculiar people apart from the rest of the world, but these few examples of their odd behavior will explain the suspicion and detestation in which they were held by their fat and happy neighbors who invariably mixed their piety with a dose of that comfortable doctrine which bids us live and let live.
Even so, the Anabaptists, like the Baptists and many other dissenters, might in the end have discovered a way to placate the authorities, if only they had been able to protect themselves from their own friends.
Undoubtedly there are many honest Bolshevists who dearly love their fellow proletarians and who spend their waking hours trying to make this world a better and happier place. But when the average person hears the word “Bolshevik,” he thinks of Moscow and of a reign of terror established by a handful of scholarly cut-throats, of jails full of innocent people and firing squads jeering at the victims they are about to shoot. This picture may be slightly unfair, but it is no more than natural that it should be part of the popular myth after the unspeakable things which have happened in Russia during the last seven years.
The really good and peaceful Anabaptists of the sixteenth century suffered from a similar disadvantage. As a sect they were suspected of many strange crimes, and with good reason. In the first place, they were inveterate Bible readers. This, of course, is not a crime at all, but let me finish my sentence. The Anabaptists studied the scriptures without any discrimination and that is a very dangerous thing when one has a strong predilection for the Book of Revelation.
This strange work which even as late as the fifth century was rejected as a bit of “spurious writing” was just the sort of thing to appeal to people who lived during a period of intense emotional passions. The exile of Patmos spoke a language which these poor, hunted creatures understood. When his impotent rage drove him into hysterical prophecies anent the modern Babylon, all the Anabaptists shouted amen and prayed for the speedy coming of the New Heaven and the New Earth.
It was not the first time that weak minds gave way under the stress of a great excitement. And almost every persecution of the Anabaptists was followed by violent outbursts of religious insanity. Men and women would rush naked through the streets, announcing the end of the world, trying to indulge in weird sacrifices that the fury of God might be appeased. Old hags would enter the divine services of some other sect and break up the meeting, stridently shrieking nonsense about the coming of the Dragon.