'Of what advantage is it to show the way to the blind, who will not see it?' cried the doctor: 'I could answer you, that Christ's apostles could only baptize adults, because those only came over to christianity at first; but that, at a later period, the burning zeal of the great Augustine placed near the heart of the christian fathers the duty of consecrating their children to Christ through the holy baptism into the covenant, and thereby to deliver them from the original sin and impart to them the redemption through Christ, before peradventure they should be snatched away in their tender youth by a premature death. Would to God that this schism was the only one that your companions in your mistaken faith defend with such terrible obstinacy and fierceness. You have yet other dogmas which you advance, sufficient to convert our earth, God's beautiful temple, into a den of murderers. Your community of goods, your equality of rank, your struggle against secular authority, lead directly to lawless confusion, robbery, murder, and unhappy revolution.' 'Even the best opinions may be misconstrued,' replied Alf, angrily. 'The gospel looks upon all men as equal. The distinctions made among them by birth, rank, and wealth, are contrary to its spirit. Christians who possess the doctrines of God as precepts, and take his spirit for their guide, need no power that destroys religious liberty without authority. They are able to govern themselves by the word of God, and the Holy Spirit will always guide them, that they stumble not in the paths in which they are led by their faith.' 'Unhappy, infatuated youth!' cried the doctor, with a majestic prophetic look and tone. 'Go now into the unfortunate city, and behold how the anabaptist spirit has conducted your companions to robbery, incendiarism and murder, in the smoking ruins of the cloister, and in the bleeding bodies which strew the highways! If this horrible spectacle be not enough to move your heart, think of the words which in this sad hour I address to you in the name of that God whom your proceedings profane. These crimes will be but the beginning of your afflictions. Your equality will yet be to you but equality of misery--your community of goods will bring you to beggary. Instead of the magistracy which you now drive away, miscreants will rise up from the midst of you, and with bloody hands rend your own entrails, until the wrath of a long suffering God finally awakes, until the avenger appears, and you all perish in one common ruin.' 'There come horsemen galloping,' cried the doctor's attendant, who was standing at the window with his cup; 'and, if I see rightly, they bear our lord bishop's colors. It might be well for me to go back to the city.' 'The bishop's riders!' sighed the doctor. 'It often happens that the avenger only lingers near; but this time the Lord in his anger has given him wings.'