THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
30P
bering with pride their protest against slavery as early as 1688, and still retaining, after the lapse of two centuries, their Anglicized Rhenish German dialect (" Pennsylvania Dutch "). As in the case of the Quakers, their principle of non-resistance was respected both in the Revolution and in the Civil War, although in 17S6 many, disapproving of the resistance to England, emigrated to Canada, where their numbers were much increased especially by Russian immigrants to Manitoba in 1874.
The Mennonites now number some 250,000, of whom 60,000 are in Holland, 18,000 in Germany, 1,500 in Switzerland, 800 in France, 800 in Poland and Galicia, 70,000 in Russia, 20,000 in Canada, and more than 80,000 in the United States. In Germany their numbers are decreasing, but in Holland they remain stationary, while they are increasing in Russia and the United States. In Holland and North Germany they possess no unifying doctrine, the most rationalistic unitarianism existing side by side with pietistic orthodoxy. Their distinguishing characteristics are their doctrines of opposition to all ecclesiastical control, personal responsibility, autonomy of the churches, freedom of conscience, separation of Church and State, and a practical piety, devoid of dogma but manifested in domestic and economic virtues. Their external tokens are adult baptism, avoidance of taking oaths, non-resistance, and, with some, the washing of feet as a symbol of the equality of all in ministering love. Their churches are essentially voluntary and family organizations, and this fact explains even more than the long periods of persecution which they have endured, and their resultant caution, their reluctance to receive new members. Although they defend their own doctrines, they do not polemize against others. S. Cramer.
VIII. In America. — 1. Antecedents: Of the various bodies of Mennonites in America some represent schisms and subdivisions from the church in . which Menno Simons was the most
Brethren Prornuient leader, while others antedate Menno's renunciation of the Church of Rome. The modern Mennonites are the direct successors of three distinct Anabaptist denominations of the Reformation time — the Swiss Brethren, Obbenites, and Hutterites.
The Swiss Brethren, the leading Anabaptist denomination of Switzerland and southern Germany, were first organized at Zurich, in Jan., 1525. Their first leaders were Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, Georg Blaurock, Michael Sattler, and Pilgram Marbeck (q.v.). The Swiss Brethren were the only Anabaptist body in South Germany and Switzerland that survived the relentless persecution of the dissenters. Their principal stronghold was Strasburg, where their sufferings stopped short with banishment, confiscation, and imprisonment. As to their doctrinal position there are extant various reliable sources, such as the confession of Schlatten (1527, republished by W. Kohler, Giessen, 1908; cf. the articles of Kautz in Selected Works of Euldreich Zwingli, ed. S. M. Jackson, pp. 177 sqq., Philadelphia, 1901); the protocols of the disputations of Zofingen (1532), St. Gall (1532), and Frankenthal (1571); the proceedings of a number of conferences,
held at or near Strasburg, in 1555, 1557, 1568, and 1607, at Obersiilzen (exact date unknown) and at Offstein in 1688; also numerous epistles and the Ausbund, the hymnal of this denomination, published for the first time in 1570 or 1571 (R. Wolkan, Die Lieder der Wiedertaufer, p. 122, Berlin, 1903), which has been reprinted for the tenth time, Lancaster, Pa., 1908, besides editions published at Elkhart, Ind. From Menno Simons the Swiss Brethren differed on certain points to which Menno ascribed great importance. Between 1693 and 1700 Jacob Amann, a Swiss minister, began to insist on the avoidance of the excommunicated, as taught by Menno; his agitation resulted in a schism which has continued to this day. The followers of Amann, called Amannite or Amish Brethren, number now over 15,000 in America, although only the Old Order Amish have retained all their former peculiarities. After the secession of the Amish from the Swiss Brethren, the latter were sometimes named Reist Brethren, from Hans Reist, their leading minister at the time of the schism. The largest Mennonite body in America, known in some states as " Old Mennonite," descends from the Swiss (Reist) Brethren, whom they follow in doctrine and practise. Both the Reist and Amish Brethren, with the exception of the Old Order Amish, have in South Germany and America adopted the name Mennonite; in Switzerland and France this name is not officially used by them.
On the relation of the Swiss Brethren to Menno Simons, it is first of all to be said that Menno's i> own sphere of influence was confined to the " ites6n" Netherlands and northern Germany where Dutch or Low German was the vernacular. In 1536 Menno Simons (see Simons, Menno), until then a Roman Catholic priest, united with a sect called Obbenites, from Obbe Philips. These people had only a few years prior renounced Romanism to become adherents of Melchior Hoffmann (q.v.). For a short time Hoffmann practised the baptism of adults only and rejected infant baptism, hence he is generally considered an Anabaptist; but he soon suspended this practise and a few years later expressly sanctioned the baptism of infants, while refusing to recant other teachings upon which he placed greater importance (Hulshof, Geschiedenis van de Doopsgezinden te Straatsburg, p. 180, Amsterdam, 1905). Offensive to Lutherans and Swiss Brethren alike was his faith in the prophecies of Ursula Jost of Strasburg, whose visions date from the year 1524. Hoffmann accepted her dreams as divinely inspired and consequently believed great changes in Church and State to be imminent, and that a wonderful period of liberty of conscience and missionary activity (not the millennium) was close at hand. Hoffmann developed a peculiar doctrine on the incarnation — that Christ's human nature as well as his divine nature was of heaven. He also taught the sinlessness of believers and other doctrines that were regarded as unscriptural by the Swiss Brethren, whom he considered outside of true spiritual enlightenment. His followers were known as the Melchiorites. After Hoffmann's imprisonment in Strasburg in 1533, Jan Matthysen, a baker of Haarlem, the founder of the sect of the Miinster-