ANABAPTISTS

(See Baptists .) Certain sectaries whose title is compounded of two Greek words, ( ἀνα and βαπτιζω ,) one of which signifies “anew,” and the other “to baptize;” and whose distinctive tenet it is, that those who have been baptized in their infancy ought to be baptized anew . John of Leyden, Münzer, Knipperdoling, and other German enthusiasts about the time of the Reformation, were called by this name, and held that Christ was not the son of Mary, nor true God ; that we were righteous by our own merits and sufferings, that there was no original sin, and that infants were not to be baptized. They rejected, also, communion with other churches, magistracy, and oaths; maintained a communion of goods, polygamy, and that a man might put away his wife if not of the same religion with himself; that the godly should enjoy monarchy here on earth; that man had a free will in spiritual things; and that any man might preach and administer the sacraments. The Anabaptists of Moravia called themselves apostolical, going barefoot, washing one another’s feet, and having community of goods; they had a common steward, who distributed equally things nece ary; they admitted none but such as would get their livelihood by working at some trade; they had a common father for their spirituals, who instructed them in their religion, and prayed with them every morning before they went abroad; they had a general governor of the church, whom none knew but themselves, they being obliged to keep it secret. They would be silent a quarter of an hour before meat, covering their faces with their hands, and meditating, doing the like after meat, their governor observing them in the mean time, to reprove what was ami ; they were generally clad in black, discoursing much of the last judgment, pains of hell, and cruelty of devils, teaching that the way to escape these was to be rebaptized, and to embrace their religion. They caused considerable disturbance in Germany, but were at length subdued. To this sect allusion is made in our 38th Article. By the present Anabaptists in England, the tenets subversive of civil government are no longer profe ed. The practice of rebaptizing proselytes was used by some ancient heretics, and other sectaries, as by the Mon tanists, the Nov a tians, and the Donatists. In the third century, the Church was much agitated by the question whether baptism received out of the Catholic communion ought to be acknowledged, or whether converts to the Church ought to be rebaptized. Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and the Africans generally, held that baptism without the Church was null, as did also Firmilian, bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and the Asiatics of his time. On this account, Stephen, bishop of Rome, declined communion with the Churches of Africa and of the East. To meet the difficulty, a method was devised by the Council of Arles, Can. 8, viz. to rebaptize those newly converted, if so be it was found that they had not been baptized in the name of the Father , Son , and Holy Ghost ; and so the first Council of Nice, Can. 19, ordered that the Paulianists, or followers of Paul of Samosata, and the Cataphrygians should be rebaptized. The Council of Laodicea, Can. 7, and the second of Arles, Can. 16, decreed the same as to some heretics. But the notion of the invalidity of infant baptism, which is the foundation of the modern Anabaptism, was not taught until the twelfth century, when Peter all Bruis, a French man, preached it.