Anabaptists: A sect of heretics who maintain that it is not necessary to baptize children before the age of discretion, or that at this age their baptism should be done over, because according to them children should be in a state of reason in their faith in order to receive this sacrament validly.

This word is composed of α'νὰ, once again, and of ξπτιζω or of βαπω, to baptize , to wash , because the custom of the Anabaptists is to rebaptize those who were baptized in their infancy.

The Novatians, the Cataphrygians, and the Donatists, in the first centuries, were the predecessors of the new Anabaptists , with whom however, the Catholic bishops of Asia and Africa must not be confused, who in the third century maintained that the baptism of heretics was not valid, and that it was necessary to rebaptize those of the heretics who returned to the bosom of the church. See Rebaptisans.

The Waldensians, the Albigensians, the Petrobrusians, and most of the sects that rose in the twelfth century happen to have adopted the same error, but they are not given the name Anabaptists , for it seems, moreover, that they did not believe baptism very necessary. See Albigensians, etc.

The Anabaptists as such are a sect of Protestants who first appeared in the sixteenth century in some regions of Germany and particularly in Westphalia, where they committed a horrible excess. They taught that the baptism given to children was useless and invalid, that it was a crime to take an oath and to bear arms, that a true Christian could not be a magistrate; they were inspired by hatred for the powerful and for the nobility, they wanted all goods to be held in common, all men to be free and independent, and promised a happy fate to those who joined them in wiping out the impious, that is to say, those who were opposed to their sentiments.

It is not known exactly who the author of this sect was. Some attribute the origin to Carlstadt, others to Zwingli. Cochleus says that it was Balthasar Pacimontan, called by others Hubmaier, and burned for his errors at Vienna in Austria in the year 1527. Meshovius, who wrote a lengthy history of the Anabaptists printed at Cologne in 1617, gives as their first leader Pelargus, who began, he says, to develop this heresy in 1522. [1] This system appears to have been developed successively in Germany by Hubmaier, Rodenstein, Carlstadt, Westerburg, Didymus, Mansius, David, Hoffman, Kants, and by several others either in Holland or in England.

The most common opinion is that it owes its origin to Thomas Müntzer of Zwickau, a town in Meissen, and to Nicholas Storch, or Pelargus of Stalberg, in Saxony, who both had been followers of Luther, from whom they later separated themselves under the pretext that his doctrine was not perfect enough, that he had only prepared the way for the Reformation, and that in order to establish the true religion of Jesus Christ it was necessary that revelation come to the aid of the dead letter of scripture. Ex revelationibus judicandum esse, & ex bibliis, dicebat Muncerus . [2]

Sleidan determines the origin of the Anabaptists more precisely in his historical commentaries. [3] He observes that Luther had preached with such force about what he called evangelical freedom that the peasants of Swabia joined together under the pretext of defending the evangelical doctrine and of casting off the yoke of servitude. Obductâ causâ quasi doctrinam evangelii tueri, & servitutem abs se profligare vellent . [4] They caused great disorder: the nobility, who they intended to exterminate, took up arms against them, and after having killed a great number, forced them to put down their weapons, except in Thuringia, where Müntzer, supported by Pfeiffer, bold man, had based the headquarters of his fanciful empire in Mulhausen. Luther wrote to them several times in order to urge them to give up their arms, but always in vain. They retorted his own doctrine against him, holding that since they had been declared free by the blood of Jesus Christ, it was too much of an insult to the Christian name that they should be regarded as slaves by the nobility, and that if they took up arms, it was by the command of God. Such were the results of the fanaticism into which Luther himself had plunged Germany by the freedom of his opinions. He thought to remedy it by publishing a book in which he invited the Princes to take up arms against those rebels who so abused the word of God. It is true that the Duke of Mansfeld, supported by the Princes and the nobility of Germany, defeated and took Müntzer and Pfeiffer, who were executed at Mulhausen; but the sect was only dispersed and not destroyed, and Luther, in accordance with his fickle nature, in a way denied his first book through a second at the prompting of many people from his party, who found his first step hard, and even a bit cruel.

However, the Anabaptists grew in number and found enough powerful people to take over Münster in 1534 and to withstand a siege under the leadership of John of Leiden, a tailor of suits, who declared himself their king. The town was recaptured from them by the Bishop of Münster on the 24th of June, 1535. The alleged king and his confidant Knipperdolling died there by torture; and after this failure the sect of the Anabaptists no longer dared to show themselves openly in Germany.

At about the same time, Calvin wrote a tract against them that is found in his minor works. Since they founded their doctrine above all on this speech of Jesus Christ in Mark 16, verse 16, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved , and held that it is only adults who are capable of having actual faith, they inferred from it that infants should no longer receive baptism, and above all that there is no passage in the New Testament where the baptism of infants is expressly ordained. Thus they draw this conclusion, that baptism should be repeated for those who received it before the age of reason. Calvin and other authors were embarrassed by this sophism, and in order to deal with it, they had recourse to the tradition and the practice of the primitive Church. They matched the Anabaptists against Origen, who mentioned the baptism of children; the author of the questions attributed to St. Justin, who also spoke of it; a council held in Africa, which, according to the report of St. Cyprian, ordained that infants should also be baptized as soon as they are born; the practice of the same holy Doctor on this subject; the councils of Autun, Mâcon, Gironne, London, of Vienna, etc., and many accounts from the Fathers such as St. Ireneaus, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, etc.

These authorities, who should all be respectable and stronger than them, made little impression on these contentious spirits to decide everything by the Scriptures, such as the Anabaptists did: consequently the Catholic theologians attempted to find in the New Testament some texts capable of striking them down, only employing the arguments of the tradition against them by superabundance of right. Indeed, infants are judged capable of entering into the kingdom of heaven, Mark 9, verse 14  [5] , Luke 18, verse 16 , and the Savior himself had some of them brought to him and blessed them. And elsewhere, in chapter 3, verse 5 , St. John assures that anyone who is not baptized cannot enter into the kingdom of God, from which it follows that one should give baptism to infants.

The Anabaptist response to this, that the children to whom Jesus Christ speaks were already older since they came to him, and consequently that they were able to produce an act of faith, is obviously an interpretation forced from the sacred text, since in St. Matthew and in St. Mark they are called young children, ῶαιια, in St. Luke, βρεφη [6], or small children; and the same Evangelist expressly says that they were brought to Jesus Christ. Therefore they were not in a state to go all alone.

Another proof no less strong against the Anabaptists is that drawn from the words of St. Paul in Romans, chapter 5, verse 17 : "If because of the sin of one man death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of justice reign in life through one man, who is Jesus Christ." For if all became criminals through one man, infants are therefore criminals. Just the same, if all were justified by this one man, then infants are therefore also justified by him. Yet one cannot be justified without faith; children therefore have the faith necessary in order to receive baptism, not an actual faith, such as is required in adults, but a faith supplied for them by the Church, from their fathers and mothers, and from their godfathers and godmothers. It is the teaching of St. Augustine: satis piè recteque credimus , he says in Book III of de Liber. arb. c. xxiii.n°.67 [7], prodesse parvulo eorum fidem à quibus consecrandus offertur  [8]: and he adds elsewhere that this imputation of faith is very just, since these infants have sinned through the will of others; it is therefore just that they should be justified by the will of others: Accommodat illis mater Ecclesia aliorum pedes ut veniant, aliorum cor ut credant, aliorum linguam ut fateantur, ut quoniam quod oegri sunt, alio peccante proegravantur, alio pro eis confitente salventur . Serm. 176 de verbis Apostoli. [9]

To this crucial error the Anabaptists have added several others from the Gnostics and other ancient heresies. For example, a few denied the divinity of Jesus Christ and his descent into hell. Others maintained that the souls of the dead were sleeping until the day of judgment and that the punishments of hell were not eternal. Their enthusiasts prophesied that the judgment finally approached and they even established the date.

The new Anabaptists limit themselves to the three principal opinions of the older ones, they do not attack the powerful, at least openly, and they are scarcely distinguishable from the other sects in England by their moral conduct and an extremely simple and plain exterior, in which they are very much in conformity with the Quakers. See Quakers.

As the Anabaptists have multiplied, their diverse sects have taken some distinct names, drawn either from the names of their leaders or from the particular opinions that that they added to the general system of the Anabaptists. They are known under the names of Muncerians, Catharistes, Enthousiastes, Silentieux, Adamistes, Georgiens, Indépendans, Hutites, Melchiorites, Nudipedaliens, Mennonites, Bulcholdiens, Augustiniens, Servetiens, Monasteriens or Munsterians, Libertins, Deorelictiens, Semperorans, Polygamites, Ambrosiens, Clanculaires, Manifestaires, Babulariens, Pacificateurs, Pastoricides, Sanguinaires , etc. One can principally consult on this heresy Sleidan. Meshovius, hist. des Anabap . Spon. ad ann. 1552. & 1523 . Dupin, hist. du XVI. Siecle . [10]

Notes

1. André Meshovius, Histoire desAnabaptistes .

2. "It must be judgedby divine revelations and by the scriptures, saidMüntzer."

3. Johann Sleidan(1506-1556), De statu religionis et reipublicae, CaroloQuinto Caesare, commentarii , (Strassburg,1555).

4. "Under the cover (pretext) ofdefending the evangelical doctrine and of wanting to cast (their) servitude fromthem"

5. The verse is Mark 10:14 incontemporary translations, not 9:14.

6. From Luke 18:15, although a Greek variant uses "[Greek transcription to come]". The cited verse, Luke 18:16 uses "[Greek transcription tocome]".

7. On the FreeChoice of the Will , Book III, 23.

8. "In this case it is quite enough to believe piously and rightly that the childis aided by the faith of those who brought it to be consecrated," from On the Free Choice of the Will , trans. Anna S. Benjaminand L.H. Hackstaff (New York: The Bobbs-Merril Company, Inc., 1964),140.

9. "Mother Church lends other feet to them that they may come, another heart that they may believe, another tongue that they may confess, so that now insofar as they are sick, burdened by the sinning of others, so are they saved by others confessing for them. Sermon 176, from the words of the Apostle." The translation of this passage up to "confess" reproduces the Eng. trans. of Aquinas' citation of Sermon 176 in The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas , trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, (London, Burns, Oates & Washbourne ltd, 1920), (P(3)-Q(69)-A-(6)-RO-(3)).

10. Louis Ellies Du Pin (1657-1719), Histore du XVI. Siecle .