This, I say, is what they would like to attract and attract us to if they could.
CHAPTER 4: The Pure in Heart Peacemakers and the PersecuteD
This, I say, is what they would like to attract and attract us to if they could. But woe betide such peace. Let us have war sooner, provided that it is always for the testimony that God approves, and that we fight under his banner, and to ensure that he is served and honored, that we are content to bear the enmities of the world: and that all the divisions which are on our side, do not proceed except from the fact that we do not want to consent to the evil and the impiety of the wicked. For the rest, however, let us note carefully this word from righteousness. For the wicked will also be able to boast that they suffer: and then they will glory in being disciples of Jesus Christ. As time passed there were many heretics who boasted of their Christianity, under the shadow that everyone persecuted them. And today these fantastic Anabaptists, who have caused so much trouble in the world, who challenge both the police, and the Magistrate, and the union of the church, who sow so many errors that nothing more, they always have this sentence in their mouths, that blessed are those who suffer persecution. Or even but is it for justice? We clearly see the opposite. And so, let us learn to have this word well engraved in our hearts, and let our conscience test us before God that we have just quarreled when we are persecuted. For this is the mark by which Jesus Christ wanted to discern the thieves, thieves, murderers, blasphemers, and adulterers from among his disciples. For the wicked will suffer persecution, and we must persecute them as much as we are, as David protests in the Psalm, saying that he hated them for their iniquities, not for their persons. We must therefore persecute the wicked: but yet if they cannot boast of being maintained by God for all this. For it is not for justice that they suffer, like the martyrs and witnesses of Jesus Christ: or even like those who maintain good quarrels in this world, who ask to support the innocent, and to lift them up when they are oppressed. For these also suffer for righteousness, and they have the mark to be trusted by God.
Besides, this material cannot be disposed of at all for now. It is therefore enough that we refrain from being peaceful, so that however we do not derogate from the honor of God, that his glory is not prejudiced, and also that his person is not burdened by it. However, the peace which was announced to us in the Gospel is above all to be prized and esteemed: as when we have today Jesus Christ, who is our peace with God his Father, who ordained that this appointment should be announced between God and men. And this is also what Paul brings us back to, when he wants all contentions, all divorces, and all false opinions to be put to rest. And how? he said. We are reconciled with God, to have brotherhood together. Now this is done through the preaching of the