there you said I was right in saying that children should not be baptised before they were instructed in the faith; this had been the custom previously, therefore such were called catechumens. You promised to bring this out in your 'Exposition' of the Articles, as you did in Article XVIII. on Confirmation. Any one who reads it will find therein your opinion clearly expressed. Sebastian Ruckensperger of St. Gall . . . was present. So you confessed in your book upon the unruly spirits, that those who baptise infants could quote no clear word of Scripture ordering them to baptise them. From this learn, friend Zwingli, how your conversation, writing, and preaching agree."[1]
This was carrying the war into Africa, surely, and must have been most embarrassing to Zwingli, especially as it was not only true, but could be proved by witnesses as well as by his writings.
- ↑ Füsslin, Beyträge p. 1, n. 54, pp. 252, 253. In one of his tracts on baptism Hübmaier also asserts that he had similar confessions, in their own handwriting, from other Swiss leaders. Œcolampadius said: "Thus far we have found no passage in the Scriptures that would move us to confess the baptism of infants." Leo Juda: "We have no plain word of God about the baptism of infants." Sebastian Hofmeister: "For the sake of the truth we have not been ashamed to confess publicly before the Council in Schaffhausen that our brother Zwingli is erring from the right way, and is not proceeding according to the gospel, if he determines that little children should be baptised. I have certainly not allowed myself to be compelled to baptise my children, and therefore you do what is exactly Christian when you introduce again now the true baptism of Christ that had been so long neglected." He quotes Capito and Bucer to similar effect. Hoschek, ii., 133 sq.
