THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

tes remained aloof from the horrors of the Peasants’ War, Thomas Muentzer’s hordes and the Muenster Anabaptists [1525-1535], [their entire subsequent history proves this]. Menno Simons, one of their most important teachers explained that he and his friends had never consented to such folly and horror: "No one can honestly accuse me of ever having given assent to the teachings of the Muensterites. Rather, I have continuously striven against them secretly and openly through the spoken as well as the written word for more than seventeen years. We do not recognize those as our brothers and sisters who reject the cross of Christ, despise the Lord’s Word and embrace worldly vices under the pretense of a moral conduct, as the Muensterites did.” d) Leading church historians have asserted that it was undoubtedly primarily because the Muensterites also rejected infant baptism that the friends of Menno were mistakenly identified with them. Concerning this Menno writes most appropriately: "If our accusers wish to assert that just because we have been baptized with the same baptism [as adults] as the Muensterites, that we are therefore also to be included with them in one body and community, then we answer: If the outward baptism does indeed have such significance, then they [our opponents] need to ask themselves what kind of community they have, for it is well known that even adulterers, murderers and others have received the same baptism as they have.” e) Reiswitz and Wadzeck rightly surmise that it is possible that many descendants of the peace-loving Waldensians, during the general religious unrest of those times, regarded the Muensterites 2 3 and related fanatics as brothers, but later turned from them in disgust. f) Widespread and furious persecutions led by the established churches arose against the peaceful Anabaptist followers of Menno Simons in every country ; and because the persecuted did not bear arms, they were readily robbed, hunted down and murdered by their enemies. They were the lambs which endure and suffer patiently. (Cf. below III: “Persecutions.”) 2. In a strictly confessional Lutheran publication by Dr. Karl Meusel entitled Kirchliches Handlexikon, Vol. 4, p. 549, we read: ". . . It is not correct to say that the Mennonites descended from the Muensterites, if for no other reason than that their beginnings reach _ farther back than the Muensterites, even though both movements can partially be traced back to a common origin. The Anabaptist congrega- tion at Bockholt in 1536 [the year of Menno's baptism] revealed differences between the Obbenites, as they were called at that time [after Obbe Phillips who ordained Menno], and the Muensterites as well as the Menno Simons 3 Melchiorites. They agreed only in their common rejection of infant baptism. A diametrical antithesis between the Muensterites and Obbenites emerged above all in their doctrine of the kingdom of God: whereas the fo