THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
of the active and talented elders who succeeded him, the Bavarian Hans Amon (d. 1542), the Silesian Peter Riedemann (1532-56), the Tyrolese Peter Walpot (1565-78), and Clans Braidl or Schuster (1585-1611), Hutter's followers received continual accessions of men of means, industry, and economy from other lands. Their watchword was separation from the world, but there was no trace of asceticism; while their entire interest was devoted to a moral life, the organization of the church, and economic and industrial development, so that they neglected theology entirely. They published but few works, which now have almost vanished, such as Peter Riedemann's Recfienschaft unserer Religion, Lehre und Glaubens (Brunn, 1565; reprinted by the Huterites of South Dakota in 1902) ; but a number of treatises and a mass of hymns are extant only in manuscript. The followers of Hutter sent out many missionaries, including Hans Raiffer, or Schmidt (burned at the stake in Aachen, 1558), who were indefatigable in urging the faithful to go to Moravia and be received into the church. They were hostile, on the other hand, to the " Swiss " Anabaptists, among whom, in their turn, divergencies arose which were laid before congresses in the course of the century, although only the conferences of Strasburg are known.
The letters of these assemblies are among the best products of the non-Hutterian Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. On Aug. 24, 1555, at the instance of the Dutch brethren and the followers of Hoffmann, the first convention was held, and the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity were considered. Believing that their dissensions were, perhaps, a punishment for their endeavor to gain a higher knowledge than God has made attainable for man, they declared that all should be content henceforth to follow the commandments of God with a pure and humble heart and in a life dead to the world. In a second conference, held two years later, the greatest moderation was enjoined, especially in the use of the ban, nor, in case one of a married pair had fallen under excommunication, was the other required to avoid him or her. Thus they deviate sharply from the view of Menno and the majority of Dutch Anabaptists.
The cleavage between the disciples of Hutter and the Roman Catholics was far wider than between the German Anabaptists and the Reformed churches, although the latter could not accept the Mennonite insistence on the ban, nor agree that neither the sacraments nor obedience to the Church, but only inner and experimental faith, constituted a Christian. Gradually it came about that Lutherans and Calvinists no longer regarded Anabaptists as heretics and opponents of all ordinances, human and divine, who should be destroyed with fire and sword, but rather as erring souls who were to be won by gentle means to renounce their separatism and unite with the Church. This was the attitude of the diplomatic Butzer, who, at the request of the landgrave, held a conference of the Hessian brethren at Marburg in 1538. The controverted problems were the equality of the Old Testament with the New, which the Anabaptists denied, the atonement of Christ and his death, the incarnation, the necessity
of works, Christian baptism, the oath and magistracy, and the ban. The refusal of the Anabaptists to submit to the organized state church roused the hostility of the authorities rather than their doctrinal heresy. It was contrary to the interest of the state, however, to expel the Mennonites by harshness, so that, while both in Hesse and in Bern all severity was exercised against the envoys of Hutter with their advocacy of emigration, provision was made for the property of the children of Mennonites who had been banished or punished. This explains the efforts of the authorities to induce the Anabaptists to enter the Church by means of religious conferences, as at Marburg, Pfeddersheim, and especially at Frankenthal (1571), while pleas for freedom of conscience for the Mennonites were made at Zurich and Bern as early as 1558.
The pressure of authority, wielded with mercy and even with recognition, gradually induced many to unite with the Church, so that by 1600 the Hessian communities, still flourishing after the Marburg conference of 1538, had almost disappeared. The Anabaptists no longer regarded the state church as anti-Christian in itself, but rejected it solely on account of its lack of spiritual fruits. Some even granted that infant baptism was not really ungodly, so that although it was not Biblical, it might be advantageous, in case it was followed by a Christian education. From this point of view it was indeed possible to organize a church of the pious which should be separated by means of the ban, but it gave equal scope to the opposite tendency by which each one might join a visible church. There were, moreover, many elements peculiar to the Anabaptists which could scarcely tend to strengthen the community: the lack of a formulated theology, the absence of dogmatism, their exclusion from the universities and all higher social culture, and the oppression and opposition of the churches. These disadvantages were augmented by the lack of organization, common to all similar bodies. In the period of their early enthusiasm this was no disadvantage, but with the waning of their zeal little was left to sustain the church, so that the south was not the district where the Mennonites could survive and preserve an active spiritual life; this land was Holland, especially the province of Friesland and the towns of Amsterdam and Haarlem.
III. Mennonites in Holland Prior to 1536: Such Evangelical views as the denial of transubstantiation had long been current in the Netherlands, although the fact that Holland formed an imperial inheritance made it impossible for them to gain open acknowledgment until about 1530, when the Anabaptists from the Lower Rhine and East Friesland became influential among the Dutch. In that year the eloquent apocalyptic lay-preacher Melchior Hoffmann worked and baptized at Emden, teaching the Bible and the community of believers as opposed to the Church, yet inculcating obedience to the magistracy, non-resistance, and moral purity. Returning to Strasburg, he appointed Jan Yolkerts Trijpmaker bishop, and the latter soon went to Amsterdam, where he founded the first Dutch community, but was beheaded, with nine others, Dec 5, 1531. At Emden, on Dec. 10 of the previous