To understand the true inwardness of the Anabaptist and similar movements, it is necessary to endeavour to think oneself back into the intellectual conditions of the period. The Biblical text itself, now everywhere read and re-read in the German language, was pondered and discussed in the house of the handicraftsman and in the hut of the peasant, with as much confidence of interpretation as in the study of the professional theologian. But there were also not a few of the latter order, as we have seen, who were becoming disgusted with the trend of the official Reformation and its leading representatives. The Bible thus afforded a _point d'appui_ for the mystical tendencies now becoming universally prominent--a _point d'appui_ lacking to the earlier movements of the same kind that were so constantly arising during the Middle Ages proper. Seen in the dim religious light of a continuous reading of the Bible and of very little else, the world began to appear in a new aspect to the simple soul who practised it. All things seemed filled with the immediate presence of Deity. He who felt a call pictured himself as playing the part of the Hebrew prophet. He gathered together a small congregation of followers, who felt themselves as the children of God in the midst of a heathen world. Did not the fall of the old Church mean that the day was at hand when the elect should govern the world? It was not so much positive doctrines as an attitude of mind that was the ruling spirit in Anabaptism and like movements. Similarly, it was undoubtedly such a sensitive impressionism rather than any positive dogma that dominated the first generation of the Christian Church itself. How this acted in the case of the earlier Anabaptists we shall presently see.