baptism, however, was not immersion.
Blaurock and Grebel baptized each other, and many adherents, kneeling
together in an ordinary room. Hubmaier baptized his 300 from one bucket.
The mode was sprinkling or pouring. In all this the Anabaptists had
maintained one central article of faith that linked them to the Zwickau
prophets, belief in conscience, religious feeling, or inner light, as the
sole true beginning or ground of religion; and one other article, held with
equal vigour and sincerity, that true Christians are like sheep among
wolves, and must on no account defend themselves from their enemies or take
vengeance for wrong done. Very soon this their faith was put to fiery test.
Not only were Catholics and Protestants opposed to them on doctrinal
grounds, but the secular powers, fearing that the new teaching was
potentially as revolutionary as Muenzer's radicalism had been, soon
instituted a persecution of the Anabaptists. On the 7th of March 1526 the
Zuerich Rath issued an edict threatening all who were baptized anew with
death by drowning, and in 1529 the emperor Charles V., at the diet of
Spires, ordered Anabaptists to be put to death with fire and sword without
even the form of ecclesiastical trial. A cruel persecution arose. Manz was
drowned at Zuerich and Michael Sattler (_ca._ 1495-1527) burned to death
after torture in 1527; Hubmaier was burned in 1528 and Blaurock in 1529,
and Sebastian Franck (1499-1542) asserts that the number of slain was in
1530 already about 2000.

Two results followed from this persecution. First, the development of a
self-contained and homogeneous community was made impossible. No
opportunity for the adoption of any common confession was given. Only a few
great doctrines are seen to have been generally held by Anabaptists--such
as the baptism of believers only, the rejection of the Lutheran doctrine of
justification by faith as onesided and the simple practice of the breaking
of bread. This last, the Anabaptist doctrine of the Lord's Supper, was to
the effect that brothers and sisters in Christ should partake in
remembrance of the death of Christ, and that they should thereby renew the
bond of brotherly love as the basis of neighbourly life. In the second
place, the persecution deprived the Anabaptists of the noble leaders who
had preached non-resistance and at the same time provoked others to an
attitude of vengeance which culminated in the horrors of Muenster. For
Melchior Hofmann