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

e great and merciful Lord Jesus Christ, who is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, I Tim. 6:15, grant your Lordships wisdom to recognize the veritable truth, to follow it faithfully, and to rule the people, cities, and lands entrusted to you in peace and the blessing of God [for which they had to remain in their calling of government], to the honor of God and the salvation of many souls. . . g) The regulations concerning the ban, to which he allowed himself to be driven in his old age by Dirk Philips and Leonhard Bouvens, among others— the advocates of the strict use of the ban— when he was himself threatened by it, were far too severe (cf. below: "Divisions”); even marriage was not sacrosanct if a member remained impenitent. In this regard it must be admitted that the Anabaptists of that time misunderstood certain normally civil matters and mixed them with spiritual-ecclesiastical matters in an unscriptural manner, something that Mennonite authors have conceded, indeed criticized. h) In 1615, an Anabaptist synod declared Menno’s controversy with the Reformed theologians concerning the manner of Christ’s incarnation to be an unimportant issue, and Menno’s point of view a personal opinion which, in the "Dortrecht Confession” of 1632, was mildly criticized and then dropped (Article 4, c). Nothing is known of this issue among us in Russia. According to this polemical treatise, our Lord had not received His body from, but in Mary. i) On the whole, Menno’s polemical writings do not belong to those that one reads with spiritual pleasure, indeed one cannot read them without a painful feeling of spiritual uneasiness. He was no less intolerant than Luther, Calvin and their followers. The aspect that distinguished Menno and his colleagues from the rest was their application of the correct and strict evangelical principle never to counter, even their most erring opponents, with anything but the Word of God and prayer, an attitude which showed them to be centuries ahead of their time in their Christian understanding. The real Menno appears in his noblest and most sympathetic form in his “Withdrawal from the Catholic Church,” a treatise in which one senses that he presents his ideals undeterred by enemies or friends, although even here not without considerable sharpness, as was customary in his day. III. PERSECUTIONS OF THE OLD EVANGELICAL- ANABAPTISTS BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE TIME OF MENNO SIMONS “Observe their end and follow after their faith!” §6 1. Concerning the persecution of the Anabaptists we will paraphrase passages from the Mennonite Martyrs Mirror of Tielemann van Braght, taken from Dr. th. Cramp: History of the Baptists and other sources. a) “Michael Sattler was a monk. He was converted to the living God and became a preacher. He suffered the death of a martyr in Rottenburg 31 on May 26, 1627. The judgment against him read as follows: ‘Michael Sattler shall be turned over to the executioner;