CONCLUSION OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

We will take leave of this sixteenth century with a certain conclusion appended to the Martyrs Mirror of the year 1631; wherein we will say nothing, as far as respects the sense of the same, but what our dear fellow believers have said in that work.

We have here presented to you, kind reader, many beautiful examples (as we have found them in printed works of former times, as well as in those of more recent date, from different regions, from the criminal records of city and country), of men, women, youths and maidens, who faithfully followed their Savior, Christ Jesus, in the true faith, feared God from the inmost of their soul, and with a pure heart sought eternal life; who flourished and shone as bright lights, before all the world, in the love and power of God, their mouths flowing in wisdom with the holy word and doctrine of the Lord; which appeared more in the manifestation of the Spirit, than in elegant language or human wisdom; for their thoughts, words and actions were all to please their Leader and only Shepherd, for whose name’s sake they gladly delivered up their lives into temporal death, as not seeking to possess a worldly and peaceful kingdom here upon this earth, but, as true strangers, to journey to the eternal and heavenly fatherland, well knowing and having experienced, that they that will live godly must suffer persecution. There must also be noticed the difference between the children of God and the children of unrighteousness, between the persecuted and the persecutors, because we know, and it can clearly be shown from the holy Scriptures, that from the beginning of the world the unrighteous, whose works were evil, always envied, reviled, persecuted and oppressed those that were righteous and practiced virtue, for an unreasonable zeal impelled them to it. And it has been observed, that many times the teachers or leaders, who ought to have taught and led the people to the true religion, and into the way of life, misled them to idolatry and into the way of error and death. The shepherds, who ought to have carefully fed the sheep of the Lord with the word of God, and protected them against the ravening wolves, have fattened themselves, and paid no attention to the flock, but presented to them mostly human doctrine and the reasonings of their own mind; clothed themselves with the wool of the sheep, and thus, in the appearance of sheep but the nature of wolves, themselves been disturbers and devourers of the flock, or have delivered them into the talons of the eagle, and the teeth of the lion. So also, the ministers of God, who were endowed with great honor and dominion by the Lord, and who had received the sword to punish the wicked and to protect the good, did not content themselves with these high offices and honor, but, abusing their power, through instigation or ignorant zeal, laid their hands in the Lord’s husbandry, and inconsiderately plucked off the wheat for the tares; and though it tended to the salvation of the oppressed, it was nevertheless a presumptuous procedure, thus to root out, destroy and thoughtlessly condemn with an unjust judgment, the green plants in the Lord’s field, before the harvest; for no one but the Lord himself can truly know who is worthy of the fire or of the garner.

Hence there are no savants upon earth wise enough to step into any office of the only wise God, and to execute the judgment which he has reserved for himself; for who can fathom man’s heart, save he that sees all things, and knows all mysteries, who penetrates the hearts and reins, and knows the thoughts of all men. Such things indeed are not man’s province, for men are often, though they think they are standing, cumbered with sin, unbelief and perverted views, much more than they are aware of; and all that men know and believe here is but in part. Besides, the examiners of the faith 1041 can easily be blinded or deceived by lies and a hypocritical life.

Hence those who would defend persecuting and killing for matters of faith, and represent and urge it as right, accomplish no good by their fury, but instead of good wheat they gather much impure chaff, and fill the sheepfold with dissembling, hypocritical goats. And if any one thinks, that it does not behoove a king or prince to tolerate all sorts of doctrines, persuasions or heretics in his country, but that he may practice such a religion in it, as he understands to be needful for the salvation of his subjects, and to prohibit all others; such a one must also consider this, that if in any country several princes, differing in religion, should come to rule one after another, and each one, seeking to enforce his faith, pollute the land with the blood of its inhabitants, such a country would be nothing else than a hell, or a pool full of disquietude and oppression, where the minds of men would be in such lamentable misery, as ships, which on the dreary and turbulent ocean are rocked hither and thither in the storm by all sorts of winds, till they at last suddenly perish. But how can they so greatly hate and cast out any one for the faith, even though he should err? this is not the nature of the children of God, who do not oppress even the unrighteous, even as it is not the nature of the sheep to devour the wolves, but to flee from them, and suffer devouring.