In 1527 Michael Sattler, the Anabaptist from the Black Forest, drew up a confession of faith in seven points. It was adopted by a secret synod of South German and Swiss Anabaptists at Schleitheim near Schauffhausen, as a binding Rule of Faith, and has become known as the Schleitheim Confession. The Schleithem articles are Anabaptism’s oldest confessional document. It is first of all striking that these articles say nothing about God, Jesus Christ, and justification by faith. The central truths of the Christian faith are not mentioned. Why? Because the men who adopted this confession were in agreement with Luther and Zwingli concerning all of these central truths. Zwingli himself emphasized repeatedly that nothing involving belief in God, Christ, and grace separated the Anabaptists from him. The Schleithem Confession deals only with those points in which Anabaptism and the Reformation differ. That is the reason for the absence of the fundamental Christian truths. The seven articles deal with the church and the state, not with the center of the Christian faith. In faith in Jesus Christ as sole and sufficient Redeemer they were of one mind with the Reformers.
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[From Guy F. Hershberger, editor, The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision, reprint, 1957, p. 65. Title of article supplied. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]

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