Page images
PDF
EPUB

ITES.

MENNON Church, the jurisdiction of the clergy, and all species of ecclesiastical discipline, we gather with sufficient clearness from the facts adverted to above. In short, if Anabaptism had prevailed, it would have reared its throne upon the ruins of all ancient institutions, and have trampled under foot the Word of God itself.

SECOND RACE OF ANABAPTISTS, OR MENNONITES.

ERE long, however, a new body of extreme reformers issued from obscurity, and occupied a prominent place in the commotions of the period. Unlike the earlier race of Anabaptists, they possessed a single leader, a more uniform and definite system of opinions, and an organisation more coherent and compact. Their founder was a clergyman of Wittmarsum in Friesland, named Menno Symons or Simonis, who, after devoting a considerable time to the study of the New Testament', and the works of the Reformers, abandoned his pastoral duties at the age of forty (1536), and became the founder of a sect in Holland over whom he continued to preside till June 13, 1561. Although his followers have in vain attempted to establish their antiquity and independence of the Anabaptists proper, it must be at once conceded that the principles of the sect are free from nearly all the dark fanaticism which

1 Among other lives of him there is one by a preacher of the Mennonite community, Menno Symonis geschildert, von B. K. Roosen, Leipzig, 1848. The best sources for their general history are found in Schyn's Hist. Christianorum, qui in Belgio foderato Mennonitæ appellantur, Amstelodami, 1723; the same writer's Hist. Mennon, plenior Deductio, 1729; and Menno's Works (in Dutch), collected in 1646. After 1570 the Dutch name for the sect was 'Doops

gezinden' Dippers.

2 Thus Schyn (Deductio, c. 1), wishes to connect them with the early Christians, who are said to have rejected infant-baptism ex institutione Domini nostri Jesu Christi, exemplisque Apostolorum,' and also with the Waldenses. The resem blance in the latter case is not entirely destitute of point: see Middle Age, p. 314, n. 5, and for Peter of Bruis, Ibid. p. 310, n. 3.

ITES.

stains the records of the older party. The chimeras, rising MENNON cut of their belief in a Millennium, were gradually exploded; and so far from advocating the idea of a continuous 'inspiration,' the Mennonites had grown notorious for their strict and even servile deference to the phraseology of the Bible. Menno, while distinguished for his zeal and industry, was far less cultivated than some other leaders of the period, and the practical bent of his own mind induced him to disparage human learning, to ridicule 'the wisdom of the worldlings,' and especially to throw aside a large proportion of the theological terminology then current in the schools3. It was impossible, however, for this system to maintain its ground, unless provided with some formal statement of the doctrines it was aiming to disseminate. Accordingly, in Menno's life-time, he contrasted portions of his own teaching with the corresponding dogmas of the Romish and Reformed communities; and after his death the Confession of Waterland' drawn up in 1580 by two Mennonite preachers, Ris and Gerard, was accepted in many questions as the public test of orthodoxy 5. It commences with a vague expression of belief in the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and Incarnation, and then determines

For

3 See Menno's Works, pp. 666 sq., and other passages quoted in Gieseler, III. ii. p. 94, n. 8. example, they were opposed to all definitions respecting the Holy Trinity, and to such words as vπóσTασIS and Persona.' The same aversion to dogmatic statements, couched in phraseology not found in the holy Scripture, is still manifest even after they had been compelled to publish a confession of their faith (1580): cf. Schyn, Deductio, p. 82, where such words as opooúotos are repudiated, 'quia sacra Scriptura ea haud novit, et periculosum est de Deo aliis ac Scripturæ verbis loqui.' A similar feeling urged them to denounce the use of oaths &c., which they thought

in violation of the letter of the Bi-
ble, to adopt the washing of the
brethren's feet as an indispensable
ceremony, and to reject infant-
baptism as both 'superstitious and
antichristian:' see Menno's Works,
p. 882.

4 The treatise was entitled Van
het rechte Christen geloove, and ap-
peared in 1556. The Lutherans he
charges with holding that faith is
alone necessary to salvation, and
with gross departures from the mo-
ral law: the English and Zwinglians
with serious errors respecting the
Incarnation, with teaching that there
are two Sons in Christ.'

5 The Latin form in Schyn, Hist. Christianorum, etc. pp. 172 8q.

ITES.

MENNON that the guilt of Adam has not been transmitted to his progeny, although some taint of sinfulness was through his fall ingrained into the several members of the human species, so as to disturb, without destroying, the equilibrium of the will1. The death of Christ is viewed as a propitiatory sacrifice, of which the benefits extend to all mankind without exception, he only failing in the end to profit by it, who through wilfulness refuses to embrace the offered mercy, and so dies incorrigible. The faith which in their system constituted the subjective ground of pardon and justification, is a faith that 'worketh by love,'—a faith that leads men to participate in that true righteousness, which Christ, through the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, will infuse into the Christian souls. Of such members, and of such alone, the Church of God consists, according to its proper definition. It is also capable of being recognised by certain visible badges or mnemonic actions, called the sacraments, in respect of which Menno's language is in harmony with that of Zwingli and the earlier Swiss reformers. Owing to his theory of original sin, no place was left for infant-baptism; but the ostensible ground on which that usage was at first rejected both by him and by his followers is said to be, the absence of direct and unequivocal warrants in the writings of the New Testament. Unlike the more fanatic race of Anabaptists, who considered that every Christian was entitled to assume the functions

1 This appears to be the right interpretation of Art. IV. and Art. v. when taken together: cf. Möhler, II. 181, 182.

3 Art. VII. The following extract will shew the nature of their tenets on the Divine decrees: 'Omnes, qui poenitentes et credentes gratiosum istud Dei in Christo beneficium admittunt aut accipiunt, atque in ea perseverant, sunt et manent per ejus misericordiam electi, de quibus Deus

ante jacta mundi fundamenta decrevit, ut regni et gloriæ cœlestis participes evaderent.'

3 Art. XX., Art. XXI. The differ ence, at least in phraseology, be tween the Mennonite and the Lutheran is here complete: cf. above, p. 281, n. 4.

4 Art. XXIV.

5 See Art. XXX. sq., and above, PP. 120 sq.

Above, p. 281, n. 3.

ITES.

of a teacher, Menno entrusted the government of the sys- MENNONtem he had founded to a regular ministry, with strict injunctions that the several ordinances they prescribed should always be deducible from the letter of the Word of God. But the connexion of Menno's principles with those of Anabaptism is betrayed at least in one particular, -in his speculations touching the nature of the civil and spiritual authorities, and their relation to each other. He taught obedience, it is true, to every officer of state in all things not actually prohibited by the Word of God; but so adverse in his eye were civil functions to the genius of the Gospel, and so incompatible with a belief in the reality of that spiritual kingdom which our Lord has constituted in the Church, that earnest Christians, he contended, could not with a safe conscience undertake the duties of the secular functionary, and were more especially precluded from engaging in all kinds of war.

The Mennonites were broken, during the lifetime of their founder into two parties, (1) the Waterlanders, or 'coarse' Mennonites, who afterwards became the leading sect, and flourished in that district of North Holland whence

7 In hac sua sancta Ecclesia Christus ordinavit Ministerium Evangelicum, nempe doctrinam Verbi Divini, usum sacrorum Sacramentorum, curamque pauperum, ut et Ministros ad perfungendum istis ministeriis: atque insuper exercitium fraternæ allocutionis, punitionis et tandem amotionis eorum, qui in impœnitentia perseverant: quæ ordinationes in Verbo Dei conceptæ 80lummodo juxta sensum ejusdem Verbi exequendæ sunt.' Art. XXV.

8 Art. XXXVII. After stating that we must pray for those in authority, and pay taxes &c. without murmuring, the article proceeds: 'Potestatem hanc politicam Dominus Jesus in regno suo spirituali, Ecclesia Novi Testamenti, non instituit, neque hanc officiis Ecclesiæ suæ adjunxit: neque

discipulos aut sequaces suos ad re-
galem, ducalem, vel aliam vocavit...
sed passim ab eo (cui voce e cœlo
audita auscultandum erat) vocantur
ad imitationem inermis ejus vitæ et
vestigia crucem ferentia; et in quo
nihil minus apparuit, quam mun-
danum regnum, potestas et gladius.
Hisce omnibus igitur exacte perpen-
sis (atque insuper, non pauca cum
munere potestatis politica conjuncta
esse, ut bellum gerere, hostibus
bona et vitam eripere etc. quæ vitæ
Christianorum, qui mundo mortui
esse debent, aut male aut plane non
conveniunt), hinc a talibus officiis
et administrationibus nos subduci-
mus.'

9 The authorities for the subse-
quent history of the Mennonites are
as above, p. 280, n. 1.

SOCINIANS. their name has been derived, and (2) the 'refined' Mennonites who were chiefly Flemings, Frieslanders, and Germans; each of these again comprising a separate confraternity. They were all for some years exposed to sharp and sanguinary persecutions, chiefly owing to their reputed connexion with the earlier race of Anabaptists: but in Holland most of them were able to elicit some favours from William, prince of Orange, and ultimately obtained a formal toleration in 1626. A few offshoots of the sect are also traceable in other regions, in Switzerland, in the Palatinate, and even in Moravia, from whence, after being roughly handled, they were all extruded by Ferdinand II. in 1622, and driven into Hungary and Transylvania.

SOCINIANS.

THE same initial impulse, that gave birth to all the varied and conflicting forms of Anabaptism, stimulated somewhat different tendencies in persons whom we may consider the precursors of the Unitarians, or Socinians. They constitute the rationalistic party of that stirring epoch. What the Anabaptist had been anxious to effect by the remodelling of social life, the Antitrinitarian for the most part dreamed of doing by the expurgation of theology1.

1 See Trechsel's works Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier (1st Book, including Servetus and his predecessors, Heidelberg, 1839: 2nd Book, extending as far as the elder Socinus, Heidelberg, 1844). Möhler (Symbolik, II. 322) contends with justice that Socinianism bequeathed to a later period the work of its own consummation, namely, the entire abandonment of those elements of supernaturalism, which in its origin it had not wholly rejected:' but when he urges that Socinianism itself is a legitimate product of the Reformation, he forgets the real parent and

the circumstances of the birth. Socinianism, as modified by the Socini, came from Italy, where long before the outbreak of the Lutheran movement, scepticism and infidelity had been most rife: see above, p. 105. Zanchi, himself an Italian (above, p. 108, n. 3) complained to Bullinger, when writing from Chiavenna, of the heterodoxy of his countrymen on these subjects, and used to say, Hispania [the birth-place of Servetus] gallinas peperit, Italia fovet ova, nos jam pipientes pullos audimus:' quoted in Gieseler, I. ii. p. 62, n. 6.

« PreviousContinue »