In the year 1605 (says the writer), on the 24th day of April, Marcus Eder and Hans Polzinger, Anabaptists, were apprehended for the faith, at Nimback, in Bavaria, and taken prisoner to Riet, where they remained in confinement until the fifteenth week.
When they could neither by the Jesuits, nor by the priests, move them from the faith, they gave them over to the executioner to try his skill on them, and had them tortured twice very cruelly, wanting to know of them, who had lodged them, and who they were to whom they wanted to go; but the brethren would not tell them. Thereupon both of them were executed with the sword, and their bodies burnt together, on the 26th of August, of the same year. Compare the afore-mentioned chronicle with Jac. Th. Oal., and W. Att. letters.
HANS LANDIS, A. D. 1614
That the bloody constraint or dominion over the consciences of men still obtains, is a sad thing, and especially is it to be deplored, that those who boast of being, more than others, followers of the defenseless Lamb, have not more the nature of the lamb, but much rather that of wolves in them. It certainly cannot stand as an excuse, that such a course is conducive to the maintenance of purity of the church; but it appears to be a hot zeal to weed out the tares (or what thev iudLye to be tares):
