THE MENNONITES.
Menno Simons, a converted Roman Catholic priest, collected the scattered remnant of the Anabaptists into a well-organized, peaceful, and industrious community in Holland and on the borders of Germany (1536). He gave them a strict system of discipline, and endeavored to revive the idea of a pure apostolic congregation consisting of true believers unmixed with the world. He labored in constant peril of life with untiring patience till his death, Jan. 13, 1561. 'For eighteen years,' he says, 'with my poor feeble wife and little children, has it behooved me to bear great and various anxieties, sufferings, griefs, afflictions, miseries, and persecutions, and in every place to find a bare existence, in fear and danger of my life. While some preachers are reclining on their soft beds and downy pillows, we oft are hidden in the caves of the earth; while they are celebrating the nuptial or natal days of their children with feasts and pipes, and rejoicing with the timbrel and the harp, we are looking anxiously about, fearing the barking of the dogs, lest persecutors should be suddenly at the door; while they are saluted by all around as doctors, masters, lords, we are compelled to hear ourselves called Anabaptists, ale-house preachers, seducers, heretics, and to be hailed in the devil's name. In a word, while they for their ministry are remunerated with annual stipends and prosperous days, our wages are the fire, the sword, the death.' [1615]
His followers were called Mennonites after his death. [1616] They acquired at last toleration, first in Holland from Prince William of Orange, 1572, and full liberty in 1626. They spread to the Palatinate, Switzerland, Eastern Prussia, and by emigration to South Russia, Pennsylvania, and other parts of North America. Quite recently several hundred families left their Russian settlements for America because the privilege of exemption from military service was withdrawn. They are a small, quiet, peaceful, industrious, and moral community, like the Quakers. Their historian, Schyn, labors to show that they have no connection whatever with the fanatical and revolutionary Anabaptists of Münster.
The Mennonites were divided during the lifetime of Menno into two parties on questions of discipline: 1, the 'coarse' Mennonites (die Groben), or Waterlanders, who were more numerous, and flourished in the Waterland district of North Holland; 2, the 'refined' Mennonites (die Feinen), who were chiefly Flemings, Frieslanders, and Germans. The latter adhered to the strict discipline of the founder.
The Mennonites acknowledge 'the Confession of Waterland,' which was drawn up by two of their preachers, John Ris (Haus de Rys) and Lubbert Gerardi (Gerritsz), in the Dutch language. [1617]
It consists of forty Articles, and teaches, besides the common doctrines of Protestant orthodoxy, the peculiar views of this community. It rejects oaths (Art. XXXVIII., on the ground of Matt. v. 37 and James v. 10), war (XVIII.), and secular office-holding, because it is not commanded by Christ and is inconsistent with true Christian character; but it enjoins obedience to the civil magistrate as a divine appointment wherever it does not contradict the Word of God and interfere with the dictates of conscience (XXXVII.). The Church consists of the faithful and regenerate men scattered over the earth, under Christ the Lord and King (XXIV.). Infant baptism is rejected as unscriptural (XXXI.); but the Mennonites differ from other Baptists by sprinkling. [1618] On the Lord's Supper they agree with Zwingli. They admit hereditary sin, but deny its guilt (Art. IV.). They hold to conditional election and universal redemption. [1619] But during the Arminian controversy a portion sided with the strict Calvinists. They reject also law-suits, revenge, every kind of violence, and worldly amusements. In many respects they are the forerunners of the Quakers quite as much as of the English and American Baptists.
[1612] Mennonites, Calvinistic Baptists, Arminian Baptists, Dunkers, River Brethren, Seventh-Day Baptists, Six-Principle Baptists, Disciples or Campbellites. The last are very numerous in the West; they reject all creeds on principle.
[1613] Or Rebaptizers, so called by their opponents because they rebaptized those baptized in infancy, while they themselves denied the validity of infant baptism (some of them Catholic baptism in general), and regarded voluntary baptism in years of discretion as the only true baptism. The ancient Anabaptists or Rebaptizers, headed by Cyprian, denied the validity of heretical baptism, and carried the principle of Catholic exclusivism to a logical extreme, which the Roman Church has always rejected.
[1614] Von Ketzern und ihren Verbrennern. A very rare book.
[1615] Schyn, Plenior Deduct, p. 133 (quoted in Introd. to Baptist Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, p. lxxxii.).
[1616] Or Doopsgezinden, i.e., Dippers. In Menno's writings they are called Gemeente Gods, ellendige, weerloze Christenen, broeders, etc., but never Mennonites, See Gieseler, Vol. III. Pt. II. p. 92.
[1617] Schyn gives a Latin translation, in his Historia Mennonitarum, pp. 172-220, under the title, Præcipuorum Christianæ fidei Articulorum brevis Confessio adornata a Joanne Risio et Lubberto Gerardi. He calls it also Mennonitarum Confessio, or Formula Consensus inter Waterlandos. He says the confessions of the other branches of the Mennonites agree with it in all fundamental articles. Winer (Compar. Darstellung, etc., pp. 24, 25), gives a list of Mennonite Confessions and Catechisms.
[1618] One branch of them, the Collegiants or Rhynsburgers, held, however, to the necessity of immersion. They have recently become extinct, having had among them some men of distinction.
[1619] Art. VII. derives sin exclusively from the will of man, and teaches that God predestinated and created all men for salvation (omnes decrevit et creavit ad salutem), that he provided the remedy for all, that Christ died for all, and saves all who believe and persevere.
[Note.--McGlothlin gives as the earliest Anabaptist articles of the sixteenth century two brief Swiss statements of 1527 which bear solely on practical questions. Two of the teachings inculcate communism and that the Lord's Supper be celebrated 'as often as the brethren come together.' The articles of the Moravian Anabaptists forbade the Lord's Supper to persons having property.--Ed.]