ANABAPTISTS, a name which has been indiscriminately applied to Christians of very different principles and practices, though many of them object to the denomination, and hold nothing in common besides the opinion, that baptism ought always to be performed by immersion, and not administered before the age of discretion.

The word Anabaptist is compounded of ανα, new, and βaπ τιστ ης, a baptist; and in this sense the Nova-tians, the Cataphrygians, and the Donatists, may be considered as a kind of Anabaptists in the earlier ages, though not then denoted by this name; for they contended that those Christians of the Catholic church who joined themselves to their respective parties should be rebaptized. But we must not class under the same denomination those bishops of Asia and Africa who, in the third century, maintained that baptism administered by those whom they called heretics was not valid, and therefore that such of them as returned into their churches ought to be rebaptized. Nor do the English and Dutch Baptists consider the denomination as at all applicable to their sect, by whom the baptism appointed by Christ is held to be “nothing short of immersion upon a personal profession of faith;” of which profession infants being incapable, and sprinkling being no adequate symbol of the thing included, the baptizing of proselytes to their communion, who in their infancy had undergone the ceremony of sprinkling, cannot, it is urged, be interpreted a repetition of the baptismal ordinance.

Anabaptists, in a strict and proper sense, appear to be those who not only rebaptize, when they arrive at an adult age, persons that were baptized in their infancy, but also, as often as any person comes from one of their sects to another, or as often as any one is excluded from their communion and again received into the bosom of the church, they baptize him. And such were many of the German Baptists. But the single opinion common to all the sects to which the name of Anabaptists has been indiscriminately applied, is that of the invalidity of infant baptism, in whatever way administered; and hence the general denomination of Antipcedobaptists, which included Anabaptists, Baptists, Mennonites, Waterlandians, &c., as distinguished by their respective peculiarities; though Anabaptists seems to have been adopted by most writers as the general term.
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To the above peculiar notion concerning the baptismal sacrament, the Anabaptists added principles of a different nature, depending upon certain ideas which they entertained concerning a perfect church establishment, pure in its members, and free from the institutions of human policy·

The Anabaptists appear to have made little noise, or to have been little noticed, before the time of the reformation in Germany. The most prudent and rational part of them considered it possible, by human wisdom, industry, and vigilance, to purify the church from the contagion of the wicked, provided the manners and spirit of the primitive Christians could but recover their lost dignity and lustre; and seeing the attempts of Luther, seconded by several persons of eminent piety, prove so successful, they hoped that the happy period was arrived in which the restoration of the church to purity was to be accomplished, under the divine protection, by the labours and counsels of pious and eminent men. Others, far from being satisfied with the plan of reformation proposed by Luther, looked upon it as much beneath the sublimity of their views, and consequently undertook a more perfect reformation, or, to express more properly their visionary enterprise, they proposed to found a new church, entirely spiritual, and truly divine.

This sect was soon joined by great numbers, and (as usually happens in sudden revolutions of this nature) by many persons whose characters and capacities were very different, though their views seemed to turn upon the same object. Their progress was rapid; for, in a very short space of time, their discourses, visions, and predictions, excited commotions in a great part of Europe, and drew into their communion a prodigious multitude, whose ignorance rendered them easy victims to the illusions of enthusiasm. The most pernicious faction of all those which composed this motley multitude, was that which pretended that the founders of the new and perfect church already mentioned were under the direction of a divine impulse, and were armed against all opposition by the power of working miracles. It was this faction that, in the year 1521, began their fanatical work, under the guidance of Munzer, Stubner, Storck, &c.

These persons were disciples of Luther; but well knowing that their opinions were such as would receive no sanction from him, they availed themselves of his absence to disseminate them in Wittenburg, and had the address to overreach the piety of Melanchthon. Their principal purpose was to gain over the populace, and to form a considerable party. To effect this, says Bayle, they were industrious and active, each in his own way. Storck, wanting knowledge, boasted of inspiration; and Stubner, who had both genius and erudition, laboured at commodious explications of Scripture. Not content with discrediting the court of Rome, and decrying the authority of consistories, they taught, that among Christians, who had the precepts of the gospel to direct, and the Spirit of God to guide them, the office of magistracy was not only unnecessary, but an unlawful encroachment on their spiritual liberty; that the distinctions occasioned by birth, or rank, or wealth, being contrary to the spirit of the gospel, which considers all men as equal, should be entirely abolished; that all Christians, throwing their possessions into one common stock, should live together in that state of equality which becomes members of the same family; that as neither the laws of nature nor the precepts of the New Testament had placed any restraint upon men with regard to the number of wives which they might marry, they should use that liberty which God himself had granted to the, patriarchs.

They employed at first the various arts of persuasion in order to propagate their doctrine. They preached, exhorted, admonished, and reasoned, in a manner that seemed proper to impress· the multitude; and related a great number of visions and revelations with which they pretended to have been favoured from above. But when they saw that these methods of making proselytes were not attended with such rapid success as they fondly expected, and that the ministry of Luther and other eminent reformers was detrimental to their cause, they then had recourse to more expeditious measures, and madly attempted to propagate their fanatical doctrine by force of arms. Munzer and his associates, in the year 1525> put themselves at the head of a numerous army, composed for the most part of the peasants of Suabia, Thuringia, Franconia, and Saxony; and declared war against all laws,, government, and magistrates of every kind, under the chimerical pretext that Christ was now to take the reins of civil and ecclesiastical government into his own hands, and to rule alone over the nations. But this seditious crowd was routed and dispersed without much difficulty by the elector of Saxony and other princes; and Munzer, their ringleader, ignominiously put to death, and his factious counsellors scattered abroad in different places.

Many of his followers, however, survived and propagated their opinions through Germany, Switzerland, and Holland. In the year 1533 a party of them settled at Munster under the direction of two Anabaptist prophets, John Matthias, a baker of Haerlem, and John Bockholdt, a journeyman tailor of Leyden. Having made themselves masters of the city, they deposed the magistrates, confiscated the estates of such as had escaped, and deposited the wealth they amassed together in a public treasury for common use. They made preparations of every kind for the defence of the city; and sent out emissaries to the Anabaptists in the Low Countries, inviting them to assemble at Munster, which was now dignified with the name of Mount Sion, that from hence they might be deputed to reduce all the nations of the earth under their dominion. Matthias, who was the first in command, was soon cut off, in an act of frenzy, by the bishop of Munster’s, army, and was succeeded by Bocklioldt, who was proclaimed, by a special designation of Heaven, as he pretended, king of Sion, and invested with legislative powers like those of Moses. The extravagancies of Bocklioldt were too numerous to be recited: it will be sufficient to add, that the city of Munster was taken after a long siege and an obstinate resistance; and Bockholdt, the mock monarch,, was punished with a most painful and ignominious death.

It must, however, be acknowledged, that the true rise, of the numerous insurrections of this period ought not to be attributed to religious opinions. The first insurgents groaned under the most grievous oppressions—they took up arms principally in defence of their civil liberties; and of the commotions that took place, the Anabaptist leaders above mentioned seem rather to have availed themselves,, than to have been the prime movers. That a great part of the main body, indeed, consisted of Anabaptists, seems· indisputable; and whatever fanaticism existed among them would naturally be called forth or inflamed by particular situations or circumstances, and run riot in its wildest; shapes. At the same time it appears from history, that a. great part also consisted of Roman Catholics, and a still greater of persons who had scarcely any religious principles at all. Indeed, when we read of the vast numbers that were concerned in those insurrections, of whom it is≈ reported that 100,000 fell by the sword, it appears reasonable to conclude that a great majority of them were not Anabaptists.
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Before concluding this article, it must be remarked, that the Baptists or Mennonites in England and Holland are to be considered in a very different light from the enthusiasts we have been describing; and it appears equally uncandid and invidious to trace up their distinguishing tenet, as some of their adversaries have done, to those obnoxious characters, and there to stop, in order as it were to associate with it the ideas of turbulence and fanaticism, with which it certainly has no natural connection. Their coincidence with some of those oppressed and infatuated people in denying baptism to infants, is acknowledged by the Baptists; but they disavow the practice which the appellation of Anabaptists implies, and their doctrines seem referable to a more ancient and respectable origin. They appear supported by history in considering themselves as the descendants of the Waldenses, who were so grievously oppressed and persecuted by the despotic heads of the Roman hierarchy; and they profess an equal aversion to all principles of rebellion on the one hand, and to all suggestions of fanaticism on the other.