Page:Balthasar Hübmaier.djvu/176

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
112
Balthasar Hübmaier
[1524

convinced; the practice seemed to him both logical and Scriptural. Such was his hold upon the people of Waldshut that a large part of them were at once ready to follow him. Röublin baptised Hübmaier and about sixty others, and on Easter day Hübmaier baptised over three hundred men out of a milk-pail filled with water from the well, brought into the church and placed on the font, which soon after was thrown into the Rhine as a papal relic. On Easter Monday the Lord's Supper was celebrated.

The movement towards Anabaptism did not stop with this extraordinary beginning, but went on with little-diminished rapidity. On Monday and Tuesday after Easter Hübmaier baptised from seventy to eighty others, and, on Tuesday, "gave them the bread of heaven and washed their feet." From this and certain other like references in contemporary chronicles, it should seem that the practice of feet-washing in connection with the Supper had been previously introduced at Waldshut, and was still retained. In the attempt to reproduce the exact order of the New Testament churches, there were certain to be some extravagances, resulting from a hasty and unwise literalism.