17. In the beginning all these established Churches persecuted one another as well as every one else, but at a council held at Augsburg in 1555, a treaty of peace, known as the "Peace of Augsburg" was signed between the "Catholics" on the one hand, and the "Lutherans" on the other, agreeing not to persecute each other. You let us alone, and we will let you alone. For Catholics to fight Lutherans meant war with Germany, and for Lutherans to fight or persecute Catholics meant war with all the countries where Catholicism predominated.
18. But persecutions did not then cease. The hated Ana-Baptists (called Baptists today), in spite of all prior persecutions, and in spite of the awful fact that fifty million had already died martyr deaths, still existed in great numbers. It was during this period that along one single European highway, thirty miles distance, stakes were set up every few feet along this highway, the tops of the stakes sharpened, and on the top of each stake was placed a gory head of a martyred Ana-Baptist. Human imagination can hardly picture a scene so awful! And yet a thing perpetrated, according to reliable history, by a people calling themselves devout followers of the meek and lowly Jesus Christ.
19. Let it be remembered that the Catholics do not regard the Bible as the sole rule and guide of faith and life. The claim that it is indeed unerring, but that there are two other things just as much so, the "Writings of the Fathers" and the decrees of the Church (Catholic Church) or the declarations of the Infallible Pope.
Hence, there could never be a satisfactory debate between Catholic and Protestant or between Catholic and Baptist, as there could never possibly be a basis of final agreement. The Bible alone can never settle anything so far as the Catholics are concerned.
20. Take as an example the question of "Baptism" and the final authority for the act and for the mode. They claim that the Bible unquestionably teaches Baptism and that it teaches immersion as the only mode. But they claim at the same time that their unerring Church had the perfect right to change the mode from immersion to sprinkling but that no others have the right or authority, none but the infallible papal authority.
