§ 145. CHARACTER OF THE DEFORMATION.
That in a spiritual movement so powerful as that which the Reformation
called forth enthusiasts and extremists of various sorts should seek to
push forward their fancies and vagaries is nothing more than might have
been expected. But that such excrescences are not to be charged against
the Reformation, as constituting an essential part of it, may be shown
from the way in which the Reformation and the Deformation are constantly
put in antagonism with one another. The starting point is clearly
the same in the one case as in the other; namely, opposition to and
revolt against the debased condition of the church of the age. But the
Reformation distinguishes itself completely from the very first from
the Deformation, often joins its forces even with those of Catholicism
in order to secure the overthrow of what it regarded as a false and
dangerous development; and so generally we find the champions of that
movement manifesting as bitter a hatred toward the Protestant reformers
as toward the Romanists. Its origin is to be explained by the tendency
inherent in human nature, when once embarked on a course of opposition,
to rush to the extreme of radicalism, which showed itself in this case
partly in the form of rationalism, partly in the form of mysticism. The
Reformation recognised the word of God in Holy Scripture as the only
rule and standard in matters of religion, and as a judge and arbiter
over tradition. The rationalistic spirit in the deformatory movement,
on the other hand, subordinates Holy Scripture to reason, and estimates
revealed truth in accordance with the supposed requirement of logical
thought. The Reformation offers opposition to the Catholic deification
of the church, but the Deformation goes the length of contesting the
divinity of Christ (Antitrinitarians and Unitarians). On the other
hand, the mystical side of the Deformation, which not infrequently
amounts to a more or less clearly expressed pantheism, may be regarded
as an extreme and exaggerated statement of the reformers’ demand for
a more spiritual conception of the religious life in opposition to the
externalism of Romanism. It places alongside of the word as expressed
in Holy Scripture what it calls an inner illumination by the Holy
Spirit as an equally high or even a higher kind of revelation, despises
the sacraments, as well as all public or external forms of Divine
worship. A third deformatory tendency, and that indeed which during
the Reformation era was most powerful, is represented by Anabaptism.
The ultra-reformatory endeavours of the movement aimed, not only
at directing the private and ecclesiastical life of the individual
Christian, but also at reconstructing, according to what it regarded
as the apostolic standard, the whole fabric of the social and civil
life. It derived its name from the demand for rebaptism which was made
as a consequence of the denial of the usefulness and validity of infant
baptism. This was, indeed, the one common term of its confession, in
which its members, giving way in many directions to individualistic
subjective peculiarities, were required to agree. Adult baptism was
thus made the characteristic note of their community as a distinct sect.
The Catholic notions prevailing during the Middle Ages as to
the manner in which heretics ought to be treated were so firmly
held by the Protestants, that even Calvin without hesitation,
in A.D. 1553, delivered over one who denied the doctrine of
the Trinity (§ 148, 2) to be punished by the civil authorities.
Their sentence of death by fire at the stake was carried out
under his sanction and that of almost all the notable reformers
of the day, Bullinger and Farel, Beza and Viret, Œcolampadius,
Bucer, and Peter Martyr, even Melanchthon and Urbanus Rhegius.
At an earlier period indeed Luther had occasionally, roused to
indignation by what he beheld of the horrors of the Inquisition,
opposed the idea that heretics as such should be punished with
torture and death, and gradually he secured the victory in
Protestant theory and practice for the view that heretics as
such should neither be compelled to retract nor be put to death,
but rather should be brought to a better mind and put out of the
way of doing harm by imprisonment or banishment.
§ 146. MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM.
Besides the true evangelical mysticism within the church, which
Luther throughout his whole life esteemed very highly as a deepening
of the Christian religious life, and which the Lutheran church had
never ruled out of its pale, an unevangelical as well as thoroughly
anti-ecclesiastical mysticism broke out at a very early period in
quite a multitude of different forms. In the case of Schwenkfeld this
tendency, though characterized by very decided hostility to the church,
occupied an advantageous position, as well by the attitude which it
assumed to theology as from the quiet and sober manner in which it
conducted its propaganda. Agrippa and Paracelsus are representatives
of a mysticism with a basis in natural philosophy, which was wrought
out into fantastic forms by Valentine Weigel in his theosophy.
Sebastian Franck drew his mysticism from the fountains of Eckhart’s
and Tauler’s writings; and Giordano Bruno, by his wild, almost
delirious mysticism, culminating in the boldest pantheism, won for
himself the fiery stake. The French _Libertins spirituels_ embraced
a sublime antinomian pantheism, while the Familists, who appeared at
a later period in England, were banded together in the service of an
apotheosis of love like the members of one family.
§ 146.1. =Schwenkfeld and his Followers.=--Among the mystics of
the Reformation period hostile to the church, Caspar Schwenkfeld,
a Silesian nobleman of an old family, of the line of Ossingk,
holds a prominent and honourable place as a man of deep and
genuine piety. At first he attached himself with enthusiasm
to the Wittenberg Reformation; but as it advanced his heart,
which was exclusively set upon an inward, mystical Christianity,
became dissatisfied. In A.D. 1525 he met personally with Luther
at Wittenberg. The friendly relations that were maintained
there, notwithstanding all the divergences that became apparent
on fundamental matters and in the way of looking at things,
soon gave place on Schwenkfeld’s side to open antagonism. He
expressed himself strongly in reference to his dissatisfaction
with the Wittenberg reformers, saying that he would rather
join the papists than the Lutherans. Even in A.D. 1528 he had
been expelled from his native land, and now began operations
at Strassburg, where Bucer opposed him; and then, in A.D. 1534,
in Swabia, where he encountered the vigorous opposition
of Jac. Andreä. In every place he set himself in direct
antagonism, not only to the German, but also to the Swiss
reformers, and engaged in incessant controversies with the
theologians, working steadily in the interests of a reformation
in accordance with his own peculiar views. He died in A.D. 1561
at Ulm, and left behind him in Swabia and Silesia a handful of
followers, who, in A.D. 1563, issued a complete edition of the
“Christian Orthodox Books and Writings of the Noble and Faithful
Man, Caspar Schwenkfeld,” in four folio volumes. Expelled from
Silesia in A.D. 1728, many of them fled into the neighbouring
state of Lausitz, others to Pennsylvania in North America, where
they found some small communities. What Schwenkfeld so keenly
objected to in the Lutheran Reformation was nothing else than
its firm biblico-ecclesiastical objectivity. Luther’s adherence
to the unconditional authority of the word of God he declared
to be a worship of the letter. He himself gave to the inner word
of God’s Spirit in men a place superior to the outward word of
God in Scripture. All external institutions of the church met
with his most uncompromising opposition. In a manner similar
to that of Osiander (§ 141, 2), he identified justification and
sanctification, and explained it as an incarnation of Christ
in the believer. Rejecting the doctrine of the _communicatio
idiomatum_, he taught a thorough “deifying of the flesh of
Christ,” having its foundation in the birth by the Virgin Mary,
regenerated in faith and completed by suffering, death, and
resurrection; so that in His state of exaltation His Divine
and human natures are perfectly combined into one. Infant
baptism he condemned, and affirmed that a regenerate person
can live without sin. In the Lord’s Supper according to him
everything depended upon the inward operation of the Spirit.
The bread in the sacrament is only a symbol of the spiritual
truth that Christ is the true bread for the soul. He laid
special emphasis on John vi. 51, and regarded the τοῦτο of the
words of institution not as the subject but as the predicate:
“My body is this;” _i.e._ is bread unto eternal life.[416]
§ 146.2. =Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Weigel.=--=Agrippa von
Nettesheim=, who died in A.D. 1535, a man of extensive and
varied scholarship, who boasted of his knowledge of secret
things, led an exceedingly changeful and adventurous career
as a statesman and soldier, taught medicine, theology, and
jurisprudence, lashed the monks with his biting satires,
so that they had him persecuted as a heretic, contended against
the belief in witchcraft, exposed mercilessly in his treatise
_De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum_ the weak points of
the dominant scholasticism, and in opposition to it wrought
out in his book _De occulta philosophia_ his own system of
cabbalistic mystical philosophy.--A man of a quite similar
type was the learned Swiss physician Philip Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombastus =Paracelsus= of Hohenheim, who
died in A.D. 1541; a man of genius and a profound thinker, but
with an ill-regulated imagination and an over-luxuriant fancy,
which led him to profess that he had found the solution of all
the mysteries of the Divine nature, as well as of terrestrial
and super-terrestrial nature, and that he had discovered
the philosopher’s stone. These two continued to retain their
position within the limits of the Catholic church.--=Valentine
Weigel=, on the contrary, who died in A.D. 1588, was a Lutheran
pastor at Schopau in Saxony, universally respected for his
consistent, godly character and his earnest, devoted labours.
His mystico-theosophical tendency, influenced by Tauler and
Paracelsus, came to be fully understood only long after his
death by the publication of his practical works, “Church and
House Postils on the Gospels,” “A Book on Prayer,” “A Directory
for Attaining the Knowledge of all things without Error,” etc.;
and down to the nineteenth century he had many followers among
the quiet and contemplative throughout the land. While utterly
depreciating as well the theology of the church as all sorts
of external forms in worship, he placed all the more weight
upon the inner light and the anointing with the Spirit of God,
without which all teaching and prayer will be vain. In man he
sees a microcosmus of the universe, and man’s growth in holiness
he regarded as a continuation of the incarnation of God in him.
He still allowed a place to the doctrine of the church as an
allegorical shell for the knowledge of the soul to God and
the world, and from this it may be explained how he was able
unhesitatingly to subscribe the Formula of Concord. Bened.
Biedermann, who was for a long time his deacon, and then
his successor in the pastoral office, sympathised with his
master’s views, and subsequently made vigorous attempts to
disseminate them in his writings. On this account he was deposed
in A.D. 1660.[417]
§ 146.3. =Franck, Thamer, and Bruno.=--=Sebastian Franck= of
Donauwört, in Swabia, a learned printer and voluminous writer
in German and Latin, for some time also a soap-boiler, had
attached himself enthusiastically to the Reformation, which for
several years he served as an evangelical pastor. Subsequently,
however, he broke off from it, condemned and abused with sharp
criticism and biting satire all the theological movements of
his age, demanded unrestricted religious liberty, defended the
Anabaptists against the intolerance of the theologians, and
sought satisfaction for himself in a mysticism tending toward
pantheism constructed out of Erigena, Eckhart, and Tauler.
Among his theologico-philosophical writings, the most important
are the “Golden Ark, or Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,”
and especially the 280 spirited “Paradoxa, _i.e._ Wonderful
Words out of Holy Scripture.” Against what he regarded as
the idolatrous worship of the letter in Luther’s theology he
directed “The Book sealed with Seven Seals.” In unreconciled
contradictions collected in this tract out of Scripture he
thinks to be able to prove that God Himself wished to warn us
against the deifying of the letter. The letter is the devil’s
seat, the sword of antichrist; he has the letter on his side,
the spirit against him. With the letter the old Pharisees
slew Christ, and their modern representatives are doing the
same to-day. The letter killeth, the spirit alone giveth life.
He also attached very little importance to the sacrament and
external ordinances. He makes no distinction, or at most only
one of degree, between God and nature. God, God’s Word, God’s
Son, the Holy Spirit, and nature are with him only various
aspects or manifestations of the same power, which is all
in all; and his theory of evil inclines strongly to dualism.
On the other side, he deserves the heartiest recognition as
a German prose writer in respect of the purity, copiousness,
and refinement of his style, and as the author of the first
text books of history and geography in the German language.
After a changeful and eventful life in several cities of South
Germany, having been expelled successively from Nuremberg,
Strassburg, and Ulm, he died at Basel in A.D. 1542.--A career
in every point resembling his was that of =Theobald Thamer=, of
Alsace. After having sat at the feet of Luther in Wittenberg as
an enthusiastic disciple, he took up an attitude of opposition
to the Reformation by giving absolute determining authority to
the subjective principle of conscience, and by the rejection of
the Lutheran doctrine of justification. He went over ultimately
to the Roman Catholic church in A.D. 1557, to seek there
the peace of soul that he had lost, and died as professor
of theology at Freiburg, in A.D. 1569.--A far more powerful
thinker than either of these two was the Italian Dominican monk,
=Giordano Bruno= of Nola. His violent and abusive invectives
against monkery, transubstantiation, and the immaculate
conception obliged him, in A.D. 1580, to flee to Geneva.
From thence he betook himself to Paris, where he delivered
lectures on the _ars magna_ of Lullus (§ 103, 7); afterwards
spent several years in London engaged in literary work, from
A.D. 1586 to A.D. 1588 taught at Wittenberg, and on leaving
that place delivered an impassioned eulogy on Luther. After
a further continued life of adventure during some years
in Germany, he returned to Italy, and was burnt in Rome in
A.D. 1600 as a heretic. A complete edition of his numerous
writings in the Italian language does not exist. These are
partly allegorico-satirical, partly metaphysical, on the idea
of the Divine unity and universality, in which the poetical
and philosophical are blended together. He adopted the doctrine
of God set forth by Nicholas of Cusa (§ 113, 6), representing
the deity as at once the maximum and the minimum, and carried
out this idea to its logical conclusion in pantheism. Bruno
deserves special recognition as a consistent protester against
the geocentric theories of ecclesiastical scholastic science,
and for this merits a place among the first apologists of the
Copernican system.[418]
§ 146.4. =The Pantheistic Libertine Sects of the Spirituals=
in France, reminding us in theory and practice of the mediæval
Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5), had their
origin in the Walloon provinces of the Netherlands. As early as
A.D. 1529 a certain Coppin preached their gospel in his native
city of Lille or Ryssel. Quintin and Pocquet, both from the
province of Hennegau, transplanted it to France in A.D. 1530.
At the court of the liberal-minded and talented Queen Margaret
of Navarre (§ 120, 8), they found at first a hearty welcome, and
from this centre carried on secretly a successful propaganda,
until Calvin’s influence over the queen, as well as his
energetic polemic, “Against the Fantastic and Mad Sect of the
Libertines, who call themselves Spirituals, A.D. 1545,” put
a stop to their further progress. The contemporary =Libertines
of Geneva= (§ 138, 3, 4), who rose up against the rigoristic
church discipline of Calvin, are not to be confounded with these
Netherland-French Libertines, although their apostle Pocquet
also lived and laboured for a long time in Geneva. The impudent
immorality of the Genevan Libertines was quite different
from the moral levity of the _Spirituels_, which had always a
spiritualistic-pantheistic significance, their characteristics
consisting rather in a broad denial of and contempt for
Christian doctrines and the facts of gospel history.
§ 146.5. Under the name of =Familists=, _Familia charitatis_,
Henry Nicolai or Nicholas of Münster, who had previously
been closely related to David Joris (§ 148, 1), founded a
new mystical sect in England during the reign of Elizabeth.
They were distinguished from the Anabaptists by treating with
indifference the question of infant baptism. Nicholas appeared
as the apostle of love in and through which the mystical
deification of man is accomplished. Although uneducated, he
composed several works, and in one of these designated himself
as “endowed with God in the spirit of His love.” His followers
have been charged with immoral practices, and the doctrine has
been ascribed to them that Christ is nothing more than a Divine
condition communicating itself to all the saints.[419]
§ 147. ANABAPTISM.[420]
The fanatical ultra-reforming tendencies which characterize the later
so called Anabaptism, first made their appearance within the area of the
Saxon reformation. They now broke forth in wild revolutionary tumults,
and were fundamentally the same as the earlier Wittenberg exhibitions
(§ 124). In this instance, too, passionate opposition was shown to
the continuance of infant baptism, without, however, proceeding so far
as decidedly to insist upon rebaptism, and making that a common bond
and badge to distinguish and hold together separate communities of
their own, inspired by that fundamental tendency. This was done first
in A.D. 1525 among the representatives of ultra-reform movements, who
soon secured a position for themselves on Swiss soil. And thus, while
in central Germany this movement was being utterly crushed in the
Peasant War, Switzerland became the nursery and hotbed of Anabaptism.
Its leaders when driven out spread through southern and south-eastern
Germany as far as the Tyrol and Moravia, and founded communities in all
the larger and in many of the smaller towns. And although in A.D. 1531
the Anabaptists, with the exception of some very small and insignificant
remnants, were rooted out of Switzerland, yet in A.D. 1540 they were
able to send out a new colony to settle in Venice, in order to carry on
the work of proselytising in Italy.--Chiefly through the instrumentality
of the south German apostles, Anabaptist communities and conventicles
were sown broadcast over the whole of the north-west as far as the
Baltic and the North Sea. And even as early as the beginning of
A.D. 1530 there issued from the Netherlands an independent movement
of a peculiarly violent, fanatical, and revolutionary character, which
spread far and wide. In A.D. 1534, John of Leyden set up his Anabaptist
kingdom in Münster with endless glitter and display, and sent out
messengers over all the world to gather the “people of God” together
into the “new Zion.” The unfortunate termination of his short reign,
however, had a sobering influence upon the excited enthusiasts, so that
they resolved to abandon those revolutionary and socialistic tendencies,
to which their brethren in south and east Germany had never given way,
or, if at all, only in isolated cases where they had been carried away
by chiliastic expectations. Yet were they in the north as well as in
the south, afterwards as well as before, mercilessly persecuted on
all hands, almost as severely by the Protestant as by the Catholic
governments, and often imprisoned in crowds, banished, scourged,
drowned, hanged, beheaded, burnt. Under all these tribulations they
developed a truly wonderful persistency of belief, and exhibited a
heroic martyr spirit. To collect their scattered remnants, and to save
them from destruction by a calm and sensible reformation, was the work
to which from A.D. 1536 Menno Simons unweariedly applied himself.
§ 147.1. =The Anabaptist Movement in General.=--The name of
Anabaptists has always been repudiated by those so designated as
a calumnious nickname and term of reproach. And, in fact, it is
clearly inadequate, inasmuch as it does not characterize either
the regulating principle or the essential core and nature of
the aim of the party, which had been already fully developed
before rebaptism had been set up as a term of membership.
Within their own constituted congregations no second baptism
found place, but only one baptism of adults on the ground of
a personal profession of faith. Nevertheless, the rejected
designation had, at the time at which it had originated, this
justification, that then all the members of this community
actually were rebaptizers or had been rebaptized; and the
introduction of a second baptism, as it was the result and
consequence of their fundamental principle, became also the
occasion, means, and basis for their incorporation into an
independent denomination.--The representatives of the Anabaptist
movement showed their ultra-reforming character by this, that
while at one with Luther and Zwingli in seeking the overthrow
of all views and practices of the Roman Catholic church regarded
by them as unevangelical, they characterized the position of the
reformers as a halting half way, and so denounced them as still
deeply rooted in the antichristian errors of the papacy. And
because the reformers firmly repudiated them, and vigorously
opposed and refused to countenance those radical demands and
fanatical chiliastic expectations of theirs that went so much
further, they turned upon them and their reformed institutions
often with a fury and bitterness even more intense than they
manifested to their Romish opponents. Most offensive to them
was the attitude of the reformers toward the civil authorities.
They were especially indignant at the reformers for not
rejecting with scorn the help of magistrates in carrying out
the Reformation movement, for recognising, not only the right,
but the duty of civil rulers to co-operate in the reconstruction
of the church, to exercise control over the ecclesiastical and
religious life of the community as well as of each individual,
to see to the maintenance of church order, and to visit the
refractory with civil penalties. Then their innermost principle
was the endeavour to make a complete and thorough distinction
between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace, the
kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, of the converted
and the unconverted, so as to restore a visible kingdom of
saints by gathering together all true believers from all
sections of the utterly corrupted church into a new holy
communion of the regenerate. Thus they would prepare the way
for the promised millennium, when the saints shall rule the
world. The State, with its penalties and punishments, belongs
essentially to the domain of evil, and is to be endured only so
long as there are unbelievers and unconverted people, who alone
are under its jurisdiction. The community of true Christians,
on the other hand, is in no need of any secular magistracy, for
this law, which the civil power administers, concerns only the
unrighteous and evildoers. But in matters of religion and the
inner man, the civil authority can have no manner of right to
interfere; as, on the other hand, believers ought not to accept
any sort of magisterial office or civic rank. Freedom in matters
of conscience, religion, worship, and doctrine is a fundamental
axiom, which forms the primary privilege of every religious
denomination, and the only admissible punishment in connection
with religious questions is exclusion from the particular
community. The only unconditionally valid legislative code for
Christians is the Bible. To the law of the State, however, he is
not to submit at all in spiritual things, and even in temporal
things only in so far as Holy Scripture and his own conscience,
enlightened by the Spirit of God, do not enter a protest; but
where the injunction of a magistrate oversteps the limit, he
must offer strenuous resistance, and contend even to blood
and death.--With respect to the mode of life and activity
within the ranks of the community, the peculiarly high claims
which they put forth to be regarded as a congregation of chosen
saints demanded that they should insist upon the actual personal
conversion and regeneration of each individual member, the
exclusion of everything sinful and worldly by means of a rigidly
strict discipline, and where necessary by expulsion from church
fellowship, as well as the avoiding of all needless intercourse
with the unconverted and unbelieving, and the exercise of
true and perfect brotherly love toward one another, which also,
so far as present circumstances might admit, should evidence
itself in the voluntary sharing of goods. As a condition of
the admission of any individual into the community proof had
to be given of repentance and faith, and as an authenticating
seal on the one side of the entrance being granted, and on
the other side of the obligation being undertaken, baptism was
administered, which now, as infant baptism was denounced as an
invention of the devil, was understood simply of adult baptism,
for the most part administered in the usual way by sprinkling.
The ecclesiastical constitution of the regularly formed
congregations was modelled after what they regarded as the
apostolic type. Their congregational worship was extremely
simple, quite free of any ornament or ceremony. Their doctrinal
system, owing to the prominence given to the practical and the
ethical, was but poorly developed, and was therefore never set
forth in a confession of faith obligatory on all the communities.
Upon the whole, they inclined more to the Zwinglian than to
the Lutheran type of doctrine, especially in their views of
baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The grand Reformation dogma of
justification by faith alone was rejected, as also the idea that
even the regenerate may not in this world attain unto perfect
sinlessness. Here and there, too, antitrinitarian views found
entrance, but the majority firmly adhered to the œcumenical
faith of the church, or at least soon returned to it. Chiliastic
theories and expectations were widely spread, but the attempts
to realize them in the present by means of revolutionary
movements were soon recognised and denounced as mischievous,
and so, too, the fanatical, pseudo-prophetic craze by which many
of the leaders of the movement were carried away came by-and-by
to be discredited.
§ 147.2. Keller, in his _Reformation und die ält.
Reformparteien_ of 1885, has undertaken to give a historical
basis to a view of the origin and character of the Anabaptist
movement diverging in several important respects from the
one that has hitherto been generally accepted. He sees in the
tendency of the Swiss Anabaptist to go beyond the position
taken up by Luther and Zwingli not merely, as several earlier
investigators had already done, a revival of certain mediæval
endeavours at reform, but an actual, uninterrupted continuation
of these, involving, not only a relationship, whether conscious
or unconscious, but also a close historico-genetic and
personal connection with “those old evangelical brotherhoods,
which through many centuries, under many names,” in spite of
persecutions that raged against them, still survived in secret
remnants down into the 16th century. Of these brotherhoods,
during the 12th century, the Waldensians formed the heart and
core. Their precursors were the Petrubrusians [Petrobrusians],
the Apostolic Brothers, the Arnoldists, the Humiliati, etc.;
their successors and spiritual kinsmen were the heretical
Beghards and Lollards, the Spirituals together with Marsilius
of Padua and King Louis of Bavaria, the German mystics,
the Friends of God and Winkelers, the Dutch Brethren of
the Common Life, and, in specially close association with
the German Waldensians, the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren;
of like character, too, were John Staupitz, the Zucker family
of Nuremberg, Albert Dürer, and a great number of other notables
belonging to the first decades of the 16th century. And these
all, as belonging to one and the same spiritual family, and
forming an unbroken chain, link joined to link, when church
and State raged against them with fire and sword, found always
nurseries and places of refuge in those “noble corporations
of builders and masons,” whose tried organization was made by
them the basis of the church constitution, and has thus been
handed down to modern times. Luther, who, moved by Staupitz
and the study of Tauler and the “Deutsche Theologie,” was at
first inclined to throw himself into the spiritual current,
from A.D. 1521 more and more withdrew himself from it, and even
Zwingli detached himself from it on account of some proceedings
which he did not approve. The origin of the so called Anabaptism
is thus, not merely traced back to these two great reformers,
but rather is conditioned by the firm maintenance of a primitive
evangelical tendency, from which those two turned aside. In the
one case we have “new evangelicals,” founding a new communion;
in the other, “old evangelicals,” conserving and continuing
the old communion. And not Zürich, where the Anabaptist
movement began to get a footing in A.D. 1524, but Basel,
was its true birthplace. There in A.D. 1515 the liberal-minded
printers Frobenius, Curio, and Cratander, who first printed
the reformatory writings of the Middle Ages, repeatedly gathered
the secret representatives and friends of those old brotherhoods
from their hidings in the mountains of Switzerland and Savoy, as
well as from the south of France and Germany, in their “chapter
sessions,” held there in order to consult about the founding
of new brotherhoods; and from thence the opposition to infant
baptism was first transplanted to Zürich.--But these “chapter
sessions” served quite another purpose than the fostering
of Waldensian and Anabaptist societies, and were rather
devoted to advancing the interests of liberalistic humanism
and scholarship. And the embracing together of all the
above-named sects as representing one and the same spiritual
current, though supported by a great many combinations, guesses,
suppositions, and deductions, which from their very boldness and
the confidence with which they are stated are often startling,
seems to be utterly untenable, and to proceed not so much from
an unbiassed study of original sources as from a prejudiced
judgment manipulating the facts with great art and skill.
In conclusion, then, Keller proceeds to deal with the later
actors in the Anabaptist movement, and finds them not only in
the Mennonites and Puritans, but also in the freemason lodges,
the Rosicrucians, and Pietists. Even the spiritual tendencies
of Lessing, Kant, to a certain extent also of Schiller, also
of Schleiermacher, through his connection with the Brethren
of Herrnhut, seem to him determined and dominated by this same
fundamental principle! The baselessness of Keller’s arguments
has been thoroughly exposed by Kolde and Carl Müller, yet he
continues unweariedly to repeat and set them forth.
§ 147.3. =The Swiss Anabaptists.=--Even in German Switzerland,
although the reformers of that country had proceeded much
further than the Saxon reformers in the direction of removing
every vestige of Roman Catholicism in constitution, doctrine,
worship, and discipline, ultra-reforming tendencies soon made
their appearance among those who thought that such changes
were not radical and thorough enough. Here, too, the refusal
to recognise infant baptism was made specially prominent. Indeed
even Zwingli himself at first pronounced against its necessity
and serviceableness. According to him, baptism was not, as with
Luther, a means of grace, but analogous to the circumcision
of the Old Testament--a sign of obligation, by means of which
the subject of baptism accepted the Christian faith and life as
binding upon him. Thus he was inclined for a time to depreciate
infant baptism, without however declaring it absolutely
unallowable. But when subsequently it became apparent that
the radical opposition to it on the part of its former friends,
and their insisting upon the obligation to observe only adult
baptism, proceeded from an ultra-reforming tendency, which
threatened with ruin much that was necessary to ecclesiastical
and civil order, and tended to make the extremest consequences
of these views the very foundation of their system, he expressed
himself all the more decidedly in favour of having infant
baptism obligatorily retained.--The most zealous leaders of
the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland were Conrad Grebel,
a cultured humanist, son of a distinguished Zürich senator,
already designated by Zwingli as “the coryphæus of the Baptists;”
Felix Manz, also a humanist, and famous as an earnest promoter
of Hebrew studies, but drowned in A.D. 1527 by order of the
Zürich council; George Jacobs, a monk of Chur in the Grison
country, commonly called Blaurock, on account of his dress;
Louis Hätzer of Thurgau, etc. Besides these native Swiss, the
following also wrought with equal enthusiasm for the promotion
of the Anabaptist cause: William Röubli, a priest banished
from Rottenburg on the Neckar on account of his evangelical
zeal; Simon Stumpf, who had migrated from Franconia, and Michael
Sattler from Breisgau; but above all the famous Balthazar
Hubmeier, a scholar of John Eck, distinguished as a popular
preacher and an indefatigable apologist and skilful polemical
writer on the side of the Anabaptists. He was, in A.D. 1512,
professor of theology at Ingolstadt, in A.D. 1516 pastor of
the cathedral church of Regensburg; from whence, in A.D. 1522,
already powerfully influenced in favour of evangelical truth
by Luther’s writings, he removed to Waldshut, and there entered
on the work of the Reformation, but afterwards decided against
the continuance of infant baptism and in favour of Anabaptism.
The Austrian government, under whose protectorate Waldshut was,
demanded that he should be delivered up, which the governor
steadfastly refused to do. But when, in Dec., 1525, Waldshut
was obliged to surrender at discretion, he fled to Zürich, was
there taken prisoner, and was driven, through fear of being
delivered up to Austria, to make a public recantation. He then
left Zürich and passed over into Moravia.--The original home
of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland was Zürich and its
neighbourhood. At Wyticon and Zollicon, Röubli publicly preached
in A.D. 1524 against infant baptism, and persuaded several
parents to refuse to have their young children baptized. When,
in Jan., 1525, the Zürich council voted for the expulsion of
all ultra-reform agitators, these assembled together on the
evening preceding their departure for mutual edification and
establishment by prayer and Scripture reading. Then Blaurock
rose, and besought Grebel “for God’s sake to baptize him with
the true Christian baptism into the true faith,” and, when this
was done, imparted it himself to all others present. The same
sort of thing happened soon after at Waldshut, where Hubmeier
on Easter Eve received baptism by the hand of Röubli, and
then on Easter Day conferred it upon 110 and afterwards upon
more than 300 individuals. In this way a thorough break was
made, not only with the old Catholics, but also with the young
reformed Church, and the foundation of an independent Anabaptist
community laid, which now with rapid strides spread over the
whole of reformed Switzerland. Thus originated, _e.g._, the
twelve Anabaptist congregations that existed in Zürich and
neighbourhood as early as A.D. 1527, the twenty-five in the
Zürich highlands, and also the sixteen which in A.D. 1531 were
to be found in the Zürich lowlands. An attempt was next made to
diffuse information among the sectaries and convert them from
their errors by means of discussions and controversial tracts,
Zwingli lending his aid by word and pen; and then resort was had
to fines and imprisonment. In June, 1525, St. Gall, following
the example of Zürich, issued sentence of banishment against
the Baptists. But as the expulsion of the leaders in no degree
contributed to the crushing of the communities, which rather
gathered strength in secret, and as the exiles were now for
the first time fully able to spread over all lands the seeds
of their Anabaptist doctrines, it was finally concluded that
capital punishment was a necessity. The Zürich council, in
March, 1527, issued an edict, according to which all rebaptizers
and rebaptized were without exception to be drowned, and this
example was followed by the other magistrates. In consequence
of the general persecution that followed the Anabaptist
agitation in Switzerland might be regarded as stamped out
in A.D. 1531, although here and there little groups meeting
in remote and hidden corners, under constant threat of prison
and death, dragged out a miserable existence for some twenty
years more.[421]
§ 147.4. =The South German Anabaptists.=--The Anabaptists
expelled from Switzerland in A.D. 1525 spread first of all
over the neighbouring south German provinces. Blaurock,
publicly whipped in Zürich, returned to the Grison country,
and, when again driven out of that refuge, to the Tyrol, where
the Anabaptist views found uncommonly great favour. Röubli and
Sattler retired to Alsace, where Strassburg especially became
one of the chief nurseries of Anabaptism, and from thence
they carried on a successful mission work in Swabia. Louis
Hätzer and John Denck (§ 148, 1) gathered a large following in
Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Strassburg; also in Passau, Regensburg,
and Munich; then pressing eastward along the Inn and the Danube,
their adherents founded Anabaptist communities in Salzburg,
Styria, Linz, Stein, and even in Vienna. They found the greatest
success of all among the industrial classes, and travelling
artisans proved their most zealous apostles. Although, beyond
carrying on an unwearied propaganda on behalf of their own
religious confession, they almost invariably refused to identify
themselves with any other sort of social and political agitation,
they were on all hands most cruelly persecuted; no city, no
country town, no village was beyond the reach of inquisitorial
scrutiny. Their radical extirpation was, by the decision of the
diet at Spires in A.D. 1529, represented as a duty to the empire
resting upon all; for the sixth section of its decrees enjoined
that “each and all of the rebaptizers and rebaptized, both men
and women, come to years of discretion, should be brought to
the stake and block or suchlike death without any trial before
the spiritual judge.” Most blood was indeed shed in lands under
Catholic governments. In the Tyrol and in Görz, for example, it
is said that, even in A.D. 1531, the number executed was over
1,000, among whom was Blaurock, who was burnt in A.D. 1529.
Sebastian Franck, in A.D. 1530, estimated the number of the
slain at somewhere about 2,000, and the heat of the persecution
only began with that year. Duke William of Bavaria went furthest,
with the atrocious order, “Whoever recants, let him be beheaded;
whoever refuses to recant, let him be burnt alive.” But also
Protestant governments, princes, and magistrates took part
more or less zealously in the work of extermination recommended
in the interests of the empire. Only the Landgrave Philip of
Hesse and the magistrates of Strassburg kept at least their
hands clean from blood, although they also by imprisoning and
banishing did their best to prevent the spread of this heresy
in their domains.
§ 147.5. =The Moravian Anabaptists.=--=Balthazar Hubmeier=,
banished, in A.D. 1526, from Zürich, had found in Nikolsburg in
Moravia a place of refuge. Under the powerful and far-reaching
protection of the lords of Liechtenstein, which he obtained for
his gospel, Moravia became “a delightsome land,” and Nikolsburg
a “New Jerusalem” to the sorely oppressed Anabaptists, who had
been hunted like wild beasts and made homeless wanderers. And
there they remained, notwithstanding severe hostile attacks,
from which they repeatedly suffered, especially between the
years 1536 and 1554. This was followed by “the good time,”
from A.D. 1554 to 1565, and from A.D. 1565 to 1592 by “the
golden age” of the community, now consisting of 15,000 brethren.
With A.D. 1592 began again “the times of tribulation,” until
their church, as well as Protestantism generally throughout the
country, received its deathblow. According to their numerous
“chronicles” and “memoirs,” describing to their posterity the
fortunes of the community, dating from A.D. 1524, the number of
Anabaptists put to death up to A.D. 1581 in Switzerland, South
Germany, and throughout the Austrian States was 2,419. Hubmeier
had already, by the end of A.D. 1527, after Moravia had come
under Austrian rule, been made prisoner in Vienna, along with
his wife; and there, in the spring of A.D. 1528, he went to the
stake with the heroic spirit of a martyr. Three days later his
wife, showing the same bold contempt for death, was drowned in
the Danube. In A.D. 1531 =James Huter=, from the Tyrol, stood at
the head of the Moravian Anabaptists. Owing to the persecution
which from A.D. 1529 raged there against his companions in
the faith, he migrated thence with 150 brethren. He succeeded
in composing the many splits and quarrels which had broken
out in consequence of these migrations among the various
sorts of Anabaptists from Silesia, Bavaria, Swabia, and the
Palatinate, and managed to organize them in one united body
with the earlier settlers. His reputation and influence were
consequently so great that the community took the name from him
of the “Huterian Brethren.” During the persecution which was
directed against them in A.D. 1535 he fled to the Tyrol, but
was there taken prisoner and burnt in March, 1536.--The Moravian
Anabaptists, who had been with perfect propriety designated
“_the quiet of the land_,” were characterized by exemplary
piety, strict discipline, moral earnestness, industrial
diligence, conscientious obedience to the laws, unexampled
patience and gentleness amid all sufferings, but, above all,
by the astonishing courage of their martyrs and fortitude
under torture. In regard to doctrine, with the exception of
a few “false brethren” affected with Socinian views, they
unanimously and from the first acknowledged their adherence
to the œcumenical symbols. Their mode of worship was of an
extremely simple character. As sacraments, _i.e._ as “symbols
of a holy thing,” they recognised
1. true Christian baptism, _i.e._ that of grown up people who
professed repentance and faith;
2. the Lord’s Supper as a festival, in memory of the sufferings
and death of Christ, as well as a thanksgiving for the grace
of God thereby enjoyed, and as expression of the church’s
faith in it;
3. Marriage as a symbol of the espousals of Christ and His
church (Eph. v. 23-32); and in some fashion
4. the laying on of the hands of the elders in the ordination
of the clergy.
Mass, confirmation, extreme unction, confession, and indulgence,
worship of images, saints, and relics, as well as infant baptism,
were utterly rejected by them. They were equally decided in
denying all merit in fasting and observing the feast days,
in repudiating the doctrine of purgatory, and many of the
ceremonies of the Romish church. They also rejected the Lutheran
and Zwinglian doctrine of justification, which they regarded
as a remnant of antichristian Romanism. But as the true and
only communion of saints they regarded themselves as alone
constituting the true church. At the head of their community
stood