When Melchior Rink preached, his followers howled like dogs, bellowed like cattle, neighed like horses, and brayed like asses--some of them very {101} naturally, no doubt.

In certain extreme cases the meetings ended in debauchery, while we know of men who committed murder in the belief that they were directed so to do by special revelation of God.

Thus at St.Gall one brother cut another's throat, while one of the saints trampled his wife to death under the influence of the spirit.

But it is unfair to judge the whole movement by these excesses.
The new sectaries, of course, ran the gauntlet of persecution.

In 1529 the emperor and Diet at Spires passed a mandate against them to this effect: "By the plenitude of our imperial power and wisdom we ordain, decree, oblige, declare, and will that all Anabaptists, men and women who have come to the age of understanding, shall be executed and deprived of their natural life by fire, sword, and the like, according to opportunity and without previous inquisition of the spiritual judges." Lutherans united with Catholics in passing this edict, and showed no less alacrity in executing it.