Featured John Calvin's Treatise Against the Ana-Baptist

To define the Anabaptist....

"Anabaptists are Christians who believe that baptism is valid only when the candidate confesses his or her faith in Christ and wants to be baptized." - Anabaptism - Wikipedia


" I have never taught Anabaptism.... But the right baptism of Christ, which is preceded by teaching and oral confession of faith, I teach, and say that infant baptism is a robbery of the right baptism of Christ." — Hubmaier, Balthasar (1526), Short apology

Anabaptists were heavily and long persecuted starting in the 16th century by both Magisterial Protestants and Roman Catholics, largely because of their interpretation of scripture which put them at odds with official state church interpretations and with government.

The Lutherans have since did the right thing and apologized to the Anabaptist for the persecutions waged against them. You would never, due to the high level of Calvinistic ego, get an apology from them!

Lutherans reconcile with Mennonites 500 years after bloody persecution | Culture| Arts, music and lifestyle reporting from Germany | DW | 26.07.2010


Bishop Mark S. Hanson doing the right thing and apologizing to the Anabaptist, again, something a Calvinist would never do. If I would ever meet the Bishop Mark S. Hanson would tell him that was a very decent thing to do and I take my hat off to him!

Metro Lutheran | Lutheran church builds bridges, works toward healing with Mennonite neighbors

 

In the statement, titled "Action on the Legacy of Lutheran Persecution of Anabaptists," the assembly repented for violent persecution of Anabaptists and for the ways in which Lutheran reformers supported persecutions with theological arguments.

The statement asks for forgiveness "from God and from our Mennonite sisters and brothers" for past wrongdoings and the ways in which Lutherans subsequently forgot or ignored this persecution and have continued to describe Anabaptists in misleading and damaging ways. - Lutherans Seek Forgiveness for Persecution of Anabaptists

 

And John Calvin describing the Anabaptist in misleading and damaging ways. Here is a list of the name calling....

1. Called their doctrine a bottomless bit
2. Accused them as being a canker, differing from all other sects of heretics.
3. Accused them of foolish and false opinions
4. Called their doctrine "Wicked"
5. Accused them of being, "full of wicked & pernicious errours"
6. Accused them as a "sect is a mass of such foolish & beastly opinions, as the like cannot be found, insomuch that it is wonder how creatures which bear the figure of a man, can be so clean without sense & reason, as to suffer themselves so to be deceived, & fall into fantasies more than brutish."
7. Called their opinions, "Devilish"
8. Called their doctrine, "Filthy"
9. Accused them "to mingle God so with the Devil that it should not be discerned between the one and the other,"
10. And "to the end that their villainy should not be perceived, lest we should have them in horror and execration."
11. Accused them of making men, "Brute beasts"
12. Invited, "they which be good shall know the desperate impudency, and so withdraw themselves, & fly from them, as from poison."
13. Called them "poor fantasticals"
14. Called them, "children in malice, and not in age"
15. Recommended their excommunication from the church.
16. Recommended that "after he hath been twice secretly warned, ought to be openly chastised, or excommunicated"
17. Says. "For in saying that he which sinneth by ignorance, and not by his own will, ought to be cast out, they do declare, as they do openly teach and maintain, that if a man do sin willingly, he shall never obtain forgiveness of his sin, because that all voluntary sins, after their fantasy, are sins against the Holy Ghost, and irremissible. I say that this opinion is an execrable blasphemy against the grace of God, and a false doctrine very pernicious to drive all poor souls to despair. As I have seen the experience in some, which were for a time seduced to this wicked sect."
18. Indirectly accused them of, "Mocking God"
19. Recommends death, "We agree that the temporal sword is an ordinance of God, besides the perfection of Christ. So the princes & superiours of the world are ordained to punish the wicked, & to put them to death. But in the perfection of Christ, excommunication is the utmost pain, and not corporal death."
20. Says, "What Devil constraineth these frantic men to make this addition, that the Magistrates in serving God, are shut out from the company of Christian men? Which thing is not done to the hangman for dogs, by their own confession."

And I only made it half way through the discourse (TrueCovenanter.com: A Short Instruction for to arm all good Christian people against the pestiferous errours of the common sect of Anabaptists.).

I say, there was no more villain alive worse than John Calvin! At least the Lutherans repented, and after reading this discourse an apology is deserved of the Calvinist also!

 

I believe both Martin Luther and John Calvin started out with good intentions, but really got cold and hateful in their writings as they would age. The both of them would also suffer health problems and did not at all die in peace.

 

Luther had been suffering from ill health for years, including Ménière's disease, vertigo, fainting, tinnitus, and a cataract in one eye. From 1531 to 1546 his health deteriorated further. The years of struggle with Rome, the antagonisms with and among his fellow reformers, and the scandal that ensued from the bigamy of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse incident, in which Luther had played a leading role, all may have contributed. In 1536, he began to suffer from kidney and bladder stones, arthritis, and an ear infection ruptured an ear drum. In December 1544, he began to feel the effects of angina.

His poor physical health made him short-tempered and even harsher in his writings and comments. His wife Katharina was overheard saying, "Dear husband, you are too rude," and he responded, "They are teaching me to be rude."

 

Calvin, at times, could be quite irritable, but much of this can be attributed to his ill health. He was plagued with constant headaches which hardly ever left him. The pain was so intense that many nights he could not sleep. He also had some kind of disease of the trachea which, when he spoke too much, caused him to spit blood. Several attacks of pleurisy prepared the way for consumption, of which he finally died. He had acute hemorrhoids, the pain of which was unbearably increased by an internal abscess that would not heal. Several times intermittent fever laid him low, sapping his strength and constantly reducing it. He had gallstones and kidney stones in addition to stomach cramps and wicked intestinal influenzas. To top it all off, he had acute arthritis. In one of his letters to a friend he said, “If only my condition were not a constant death struggle.” Another Side of John Calvin