An Ecclesiastical History; Antient and Modern, from the Birth of Christ, to the Beginning of the Present Century by the Late Learned John Lawrence Mosheim, Translated from the Original Latin, by Archibald MacLaine, in Five Volumes. (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the miniftry of Menno, that the different forts of Ana- c EN T- baptifts agreed together in excluding from their commu- Sict fir. nion the fanatics that difhonoured it, and in renouncing Part IL all tenets that were detrimental to the authority of civil ' government, and, by an unexpected coalition, formed themfelves into one community [a], [a] Thefe fails mew us plainly how the famous qucftion concerning the origin of the modern Anabapiifts may be relblved. Ths Mennonites oppofc, with all their might, the account of their de- fcent from the ancient Anabaptifts, which we find in fo many writers, and would willingly give the modern Anabaptitts a more honourable origin. (See Schvn, Hi/lor. Mennoititar. cap. viii, ix. xi. p. 113.) The reaibn of their zeal in this mutter is evident. Their fituation has rendered them timorous. They live, as it were, in the mid it of their enemies, and are confinntly filled with an unecify appre- henfion, that, fome day or other, malevolent zealots may take oc- caflon from their fuppofed oiigin to renew againft them the penal lasvs by which the (editions Anabaptifts of ancient times fuffcrcd in fuch a dreadful manner. At lealt, they imagine that the odium, under which they lie, will be greatly diminifhed, if they can prove, to the fatisfsflion of the public, the falsehood of that generally received opinion, that the Menaoaites art the defendants of the Ana- baptifls, or, to fpeak more properly, the fame individual jetf, purged from the fanaticifm that formerly difgraced it, and rendered taifer than their anceflors, by reflexion and faffering. After compaiing diligently and impartially together what has been alledged by the Mcnnonitcs and their adverlaries in relation to this matter, I cannot fee what it is, properly, that forms the lubjecl: of ...