The title of Brian Brewer's book, A pledge of love, succinctly presents the key finding of his understanding of Balthasar Hubmaier's sacramental theology: the re-definition of sacrament as a pledge of love. Brewer rightly challenges many Baptists and other Free Church theologians for avoiding the term ‘sacrament’ simply because of its long association with the view that baptism and the Lord's supper are the way to appropriate ex opere operator the objective workings of God. In this work, Brewer successfully demonstrates that, for Hubmaier, sacrament continues to be the natural term to use when referring to baptism and the Lord's supper, as long as it is understood as describing the oath that a believer made both to God and to fellow believers when joining the Church and continues to make to maintain their place in the Church. The pouring of water, the eating of bread and drinking of wine are symbolic acts re-enacting ‘the previous covenantal acts of pledging oneself through confession of faith to God and though mutual submission to and love for the congregation’ (p.191). It is the Church gathered together that dispenses the symbols, and has authority to ban the apostate, even though the appointed leader of the Church does this on behalf of the whole. While Brewer notes the continuity of Hubmaier with Roman Catholic sacramentality, it is precisely at this point that Hubmaier is most at odds with his Roman Catholic heritage. While both he and his theological contemporaries accept Cyprian's dictum that ‘there is no salvation outside the Church’, for Hubmaier the Church is identified primarily as the local gathered church of covenanted believers who have entered into that covenant through baptism and remain in that covenant through repeating their oath when participating in the Lord's supper. Hubmaier's understanding of ‘sacrament’ is therefore intimately related to his understanding that the revitalisation of the Church takes place by its members' living a mutually disciplined life of love for God and one another. Unfortunately the practical expression of this theory, the Nikolsburg Anabaptist congregation, did not exist long enough to verify Hubmaier's argument. Nevertheless, for contemporary proponents of congregationalism looking to revitalise languishing congregations, Brewer's presentation of Hubmaier's sacramental theology warrants careful consideration.