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.[Footnote: Moeller, Hist, of theChristian Church (English trans.), III., 65.] From this time onward re-baptism, or, from the point of view ofits advocates, the first valid baptism, became the test and mark of adoption into many communities of truebelievers.Those who practised this rite were, therefore, called "Anabaptists"-- that is to say, those whobaptized a second time--or, more frequently, merely "Baptists."The rebaptism of a person who had been already once baptized was not only in the eyes of the establishedchurch an impiety, it was in the eyes of the established law a capital crime, and the history of Anabaptism inGermany is the history of a long martyrdom.In Catholic and Protestant countries alike these radicals werepersecuted.From Strasburg and Nuremberg they were expelled, in Zurich their leaders were drowned, inAugsburg they were beheaded, in Austria, Wittenberg, Bavaria, and the Palatinate they were burned at thestake.In 1534 their sect was brought into sudden and fatal prominence by the revolt in Munster and its vicinity.Herea body of adherents of radical religious doctrines added to their creed a tenet not common to the general bodyof Anabaptists--that is to say, the duty of taking up temporal arms to overthrow the existing powers and tointroduce the New Jerusalem.The old episcopal city was seized by the Anabaptist leaders, bloody battles werefought, and after a six months' orgy of fanaticism, libertinism, and violence the rebels were defeated by theunited troops of Catholic and Lutheran powers and a terrible vengeance taken.Anabaptists everywhere, no matter how peaceable and moderate their principles, suffered under theimputation of holding such doctrines as had led to the terrible excesses at Munster, as they had long beforebeen held to sympathize with the Peasants' Revolt; and their persecutions became correspondingly harsher.Nevertheless, they continued to form communities and to spread through Germany, the Netherlands, andSwitzerland.The attractiveness of the teachings of wandering Anabaptist preachers long continued unabated,and their regularly organized congregations or communities, because of their thrift, honesty, and plainness oflife, survived and flourished, wherever they could obtain even the barest and most temporary toleration.They were necessarily a people without a national home.Seldom for a whole generation did any considerablebody of Anabaptists or Pietists remain undisturbed in any one locality.Expelled by imperial edict fromBohemia, they made their way to Hungary and Transylvania; fined, imprisoned, and in danger of death inProtestant Switzerland, they migrated to the Tyrol, to the Palatinate, and to the south German cities, only soonto be visited there with still worse persecution.During the two great religious wars they suffered especialhardships, and in the midst of the Thirty Years' War they were rigorously expelled by the emperor from all hishereditary dominions, even from Moravia, where they had been allowed to exist for almost a century.[Footnote: Moeller, Hist.of the Christian Church (English trans.), III., 437- 442.] Either from originaldifferences of doctrine and personal influence, or from later divisions and reorganization, grew up thosebodies which, although often, as has been seen, grouped under the general head of Anabaptists, have becomeknown in Europe and America as Mennonites, Amish, and Dunkers; and each of these bodies has experiencedvarious divisions.The Schwenkfelders, Boehmists, and other mystics or pietists, are habitually grouped withthese sects, rather because of their similar historical origin and attitude to the established churches than of anyidentity of religious belief.By the close of the seventeenth century the condition of these dissenters from the established churches had CHAPTER IX 67become more tolerable; but they were at best a remnant, narrowed in spirit by persecution, repeatedlyseparated from their earlier homes, still under the ban of ecclesiastical disapproval, and even where toleratedliving under burdensome restrictions.The rising colonies of the New World, especially those which promisedreligious liberty, and above all that one of them whose Quaker founder held doctrines so like their own, musthave exerted, notwithstanding their alien race and tongue, an almost irresistible attraction upon them.In viewof the political and religious history of Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is therefore nowonder that a vast number of Germans emigrated to America, and that in Pennsylvania were soon to be foundnumerous representatives of every religious sect that existed in the fatherland.The religious divisions which sprang from the Protestant Reformation were not restricted to the Old World.InAmerica, also, religion was a centrifugal influence, splitting up old colonies, and establishing new centres ofpopulation, which in turn attracted other groups of emigrants from Europe, and brought into existence stillother types of government and society
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