body, and not to the learned and famous, to understand the mysteries of God’s kingdom is a constant theme in Anabaptist writings. Perhaps the Anabaptists made virtue out of vice since they themselves were precisely the ones they so described, but they also spoke to a rich historical tradition which long preceded them, which the major reformers had initially appropriated, but then dismissed. The authors of numerous testimonials in The Martyrs Mirror are simple women and men, housewives, blacksmiths