His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant;
Matthew 25:23
"Dutch artisan Sikke Freriks, beheaded in 1531 in Leeuwarden‘s market, was the first Anabaptist put to death in that Friesland city.
While a minor milestone in the crowded history of Reformation
martyrdoms, Freriks had a noteworthy posthumous effect: word of his
heresy — adherence to adult, rather than infant, baptism — came to the
ears of a Catholic priest, who later wrote that a man’s dying for this
illicit doctrine led him to investigate it further.
To his amazement, the priest found no scriptural support for the
established church’s practice of baptizing infants before they developed
the maturity and volition to embrace Christ from the will of their own
hearts. Christians are “cheated” by the loss of that opportunity of
freely giving oneself in baptism, he later wrote."
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