A fresh edict renewed and sharpened the punishment for reading the scriptures in private or public.  At the same time, the violent personal altercation between Luther and Erasmus, upon predestination, together with the bitter dispute between Luther and Zwingli concerning the real presence, did more to impede the progress of the Reformation than ban or edict, sword or fire.  The spirit of humanity hung her head, finding that the bold reformer had only a new dogma in place of the old ones, seeing that dissenters, in their turn, were sometimes as ready as papists, with age, fagot, and excommunication.  In 1526, Felix Mants, the anabaptist, is drowned at Zurich, in obedience to Zwingli’s pithy formula—­’Qui iterum mergit mergatur’.  Thus the anabaptists, upon their first appearance, were exposed to the fires of the Church and the water of the Zwinglians.

There is no doubt that the anabaptist delusion was so ridiculous and so loathsome, as to palliate or at least render intelligible the wrath with which they were regarded by all parties.  The turbulence of the sect was alarming to constituted authorities, its bestiality disgraceful to the cause of religious reformation.  The leaders were among the most depraved of human creatures, as much distinguished for licentiousness, blasphemy and cruelty as their followers for grovelling superstition.  The evil spirit, driven out of Luther, seemed, in orthodox eyes, to have taken possession of a herd of swine.  The Germans, Muncer and Hoffmann, had been succeeded, as chief prophets, by a Dutch baker, named Matthiszoon, of Harlem; who announced himself as Enoch.  Chief of this man’s disciples was the notorious John Boccold, of Leyden.  Under the government of this prophet, the anabaptists mastered the city of Munster.  Here they confiscated property, plundered churches, violated females, murdered men who refused to join the gang, and, in briefs practised all the enormities which humanity alone can conceive or perpetrate.  The prophet proclaimed himself King of Sion, and sent out apostles to preach his doctrines in Germany and the Netherlands.  Polygamy being a leading article of the system, he exemplified the principle by marrying fourteen wives.  Of these, the beautiful widow of Matthiszoon was chief, was called the Queen of Sion, and wore a golden crown.  The prophet made many fruitless efforts to seize Amsterdam and Leyden.  The armed invasion of the anabaptists was repelled, but their contagious madness spread.  The plague broke forth in Amsterdam.  On a cold winter’s night, (February, 1535), seven men and five women, inspired by the Holy Ghost, threw off their clothes and rushed naked and raving through the streets, shrieking “Wo, wo, wo! the wrath of God, the wrath of God!” When arrested, they obstinately refused to put on clothing.  “We are,” they observed, “the naked truth.”  In a day or two, these furious lunatics, who certainly deserved a madhouse rather than the scaffold, were all executed.  The numbers of the sect increased