and gave a decent pretext for persecuting all with unrelenting fury, as has already been pointed out. Even from their persecutors, however, we may frequently discover that there was no real ground for so severe treatment—or, rather, that the real ground of these persecutions differed from the grounds alleged. The real offence of the Anabaptists was not that they were seditious, turbulent, fomenters of social revolution, and therefore dangerous subjects, potential rebels even when not in actual rebellion. That was true of a few among them, but nobody ever seriously believed this of the majority. The real offence of the Anabaptists was that they were Anabaptists—that they held and taught just such things as are above set forth. Their doctrines were too Scriptural, too spiritual, too incompatible with those that in many places were being forced on unwilling people, in the name of reform, by irreligious rulers obviously actuated by ambition and greed. Their doctrines were too often eagerly received by the common people, who lacked the learning requisite for the perversion of the plain sense of Scripture, and found their Bibles and the Anabaptist teachings to agree wonderfully. There
