s_.

[15] _Wider die himlichen Propheten vom Sacrament_, ii. Anno 1525.

[16] See P. Loofs, _Dogmengeschichte_ (Vierte Auflage, 1906), pp.
752-755.

[17] In his instructions to Melanchthon for the Cassel Conference with
Butzer in 1534, Luther said, "In and with the bread, the body of Christ
is truly partaken of, accordingly all that takes place actively and
passively in the bread takes place actively and passively in the body
of Christ and the latter is distributed, eaten and masticated with the
teeth."

[18] McGiffert, _Protestant Thought before Kant_ (1911), p. 20. See
also the same view in Troeltsch, _Protestantisches Christentum und
Kirche in der Neuzeit_ (2nd Auflage), p. 481.

[19] _History of Dogma_, vii. p. 169.

{17}

CHAPTER II

HANS DENCK AND THE INWARD WORD[1]

Hans Denck has generally been enrolled among the Anabaptists, and it is
possible to use that name of scorn with such a latitude and looseness
that it includes not only Denck but all the sixteenth-century exponents
of a free, inward religion. Anabaptism has often been treated as a
sort of broad banyan-tree which flourished exuberantly and shot out
far-reaching branches of very varied characters, but which held in one
organic unity all the branches that found soil and took root. A name
of such looseness and covering capacity is, however, of little worth,
and it would promote historical accuracy if we should confine the term
to those who opposed infant baptism and who insisted instead upon adult
baptism, not as a means of Grace, but as a visible sign of the covenant
of man with God. The further characteristic marks which may be
selected to differentiate Anabaptism from other movements of the period
are:

1. The treatment of the Gospel as a new law to be literally followed
and obeyed by all who are to have the right to be called "saints."

2. The true Church is a _visible_ Church, the community of the saints,
founded by covenant, with adult baptism as its sign, formed exactly on
the pattern of the apostolic {18} Church and preserved in strict purity
by rigorous church discipline; and

3. The denial to magistrates of all power to persecute men for their
faith and doctrine on the ground that the Gospel gives them no such
authority--its great commandment being love.[2]

Hans Denck, though in his early period of activity closely identified
with this movement and regarded as one of its chief leaders in Germany,
does not properly