Page:Balthasar Hübmaier.djvu/165

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1524-1526]
Becomes an Anabaptist
101

did or left undone, some were certain to accuse him of going too fast, while others would assert that he was going far too slow; to one he would seem to be destroying the very foundations of the faith, while another would complain of him as only a half-hearted reformer after all.

A radical wing or group gradually developed in the party of reform, and by the beginning of the year 1525 they were demanding with much insistence that Zwingli should adhere with more consistency to his avowed principle of conformity to the Scriptures, and should move more quickly in the direction of a complete reform of the Church. They demanded that he should "separate himself from the godless, and gather a pure church, a congregation of the church of God."[1] The only church of which they could find mention in the New Testament was a congregation of true believers in Christ, and it seemed plain to them that conformity to the Scriptures required that the church of Zürich should be reorganised on that basis. They had also discovered not only that the

  1. Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, i., 224. Cf. Zwingli, Op., II., i., 372; Egli, Wiedertäufer, p. 10 sq.