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The Lutheran Confessions condemn the teachings of the Anabaptist:
Erroneous Articles of the Anabaptists
9 We reject and condemn the erroneous and heretical teaching of the Anabaptists which cannot be suffered or tolerated in the churches or in the body politic or in domestic society. They teach:
10 1. That our righteousness before God does not depend alone on the sole obedience and merit of Christ but in renewal and in our own piety, in which we walk before God. But this piety rests for the greater part on their own peculiar precepts and self-chosen spirituality as on a kind of new monkery.
(tr-1099) 11 2. That unbaptized children are not sinners before God but righteous and innocent, and hence in their innocence they will be saved without Baptism, which they do not need. Thus they deny and reject the entire teaching of original sin and all that pertains thereto.
12 3. That children should not be baptized until they have achieved the use of reason and are able to make their own confession of faith.
13 4. That the children of Christians, because they are born of Christian and believing parents, are holy and children of God even without and prior to Baptism. Therefore they do not esteem infant Baptism very highly and do not advocate it, contrary to the express words of the promise which extends only to those who keep the covenant and do not despise it (Gen. 17:4–8, 19–21).
14 5. That that is no truly Christian assembly or congregation in the midst of which sinners are still found.
15 6. That one may not hear or attend on a sermon in those temples in which the papistic Mass had formerly been read.
16 7. That one is to have nothing to do with those ministers of the church who preach the Gospel according to the Augsburg Confession and censure the errors of the Anabaptists; neither may one serve them or work for them at all, but one is to flee and avoid them as people who pervert the Word of God.
17 8. That in the New Testament era government service is not a godly estate.
18 9. That no Christian can hold an office in the government with an inviolate conscience.
19 10. That no Christian may with an inviolate conscience use an office of the government against wicked persons as occasion may arise, nor may a subject call upon the government for help.
20 11. That a Christian cannot with a good conscience swear an oath before a court or pay oath-bound feudal homage to his prince or liege lord.
21 12. That the government cannot with an inviolate conscience impose the death penalty on evil-doers.
22 13. That no Christian can with a good conscience hold or possess private property but is obliged to give his property to the community.
23 14. That no Christian can with a good conscience be an innkeeper, a merchant, or a cutler.
24 15. That difference in faith is sufficient ground for married people to divorce each other, to go their separate ways, and to enter into a new marriage with another person of the same faith.
25 16. That Christ did not assume his flesh and blood from the virgin Mary but brought it along from heaven.
26 17. That Christ is not truly and essentially God but only possesses more and greater gifts and glory than other people.
(tr-1101) 27 They hold other similar articles. But they are divided into many parties among themselves, with one party holding more and another party holding fewer errors. The entire sect, however, can be characterized as basically nothing else than a new kind of monkery.
Tappert, Theodore G.: The Book of Concord : The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 2000, c1959, S. 633
