socialistic theories, have represented the whole Anabaptist movement as a splendid but unfortunate attempt to realise a complete socialistic programme, a radical overturning of existing institutions, almost an entire anticipation of the teachings of Lassalle and Marx.
While the motives of the recent writers are far more laudable than those of their predecessors, the result is almost precisely the same. The contemporary writers wished to load the Anabaptists with obloquy; their English historians wish to crown the Anabaptists with honour, as the first to attempt the application of a theory yet destined to be the salvation of mankind; but in either case the Anabaptists are equally misrepresented, and the opinions of a few are attributed to the whole. The misrepresentation is most serious when the violent measures advocated by Hut and afterwards put in practice at Münster are represented either as the convictions of the majority or the legitimate consequences of the views prevalent in the body.
It was, therefore, to neutralise the effects of this misrepresentation throughout Moravia, no less than to win to sounder ideas concerning the teaching of
