They retained their credit and influence to such a degree towards the close of the fourteenth century, that great numbers of both sexes, some in health, others in a state of infirmity, others at the point of death, earnestly desired to be admitted into the Mendicant order, which they looked upon as a sure and infallible method of rendering heaven propitious. Ma

extremely desirous to deposite claimed with ostentation the suthere also their remains after perior efficacy and virtue of their death. Nor did the influence indulgences; and vaunted beyond and credit of the Mendicants end measure their interest at the court here; for we find in the history of heaven, and their familiar conof this and of the succeeding ages nexions with the Supreme Being, that they were employed not only the Virgin Mary, and the saints in spiritual matters, but also in in glory. By these impious wiles temporal and political affairs of they so deluded and captivated the greatest consequence in com-the miserable, and blinded the posing the differences of princes, multitude, that they would not concluding treaties of peace, con-intrust any other but the Mendicerting alliances, presiding in ca-cants with the care of their souls. binet councils, governing courts, levying taxes, and other occupations not only remote from but absolutely inconsistent with the monastic character and profession. However, the power of the Dominicans and Franciscans greatly surpassed that of the other two orders, insomuch that these two orders were, before the reformation, what the Jesuits have been since that happy and glorious pe-ny made it an essential part of riod; the very soul of the hierarchy, the engines of the state, the secret springs of all the motions of the one and the other, and the authors and directors of every great and important event, both in the religious and political world. By very quick progression their pride and confidence arrived at such a pitch, that they had the presumption to declare publicly, that they had a divine impulse and commission to illustrate and maintain the religion of Jesus. They treated with the utmost insolence and contempt all the different orders of the priesthood; they affirmed, without a blush, that the true method of obtaining salvationed them as their best friends and was revealed to them alone; pro- most effectual supports, they suf

their last wills, that their bodies after death should be wrapped in old ragged Dominican or Franciscan habits, and interred among the Mendicants. For such was the barbarous superstition and wretched ignorance of this age, that people universally believed they should readily obtain mercy from Christ at the day of judg ment, if they appeared before his tribunal associated with the Mendicant friars.

About this time, however, they fell under an universal odium; but, being resolutely protected against all opposition, whether open or secret, by the popes, who regard

fered little or nothing from the ef-pects the same with those in other forts of their numerous adversa-places called Anabaptists. They ries. In the fifteenth century, be- had their rise in 1536, when sides their arrogance, which was Menno Simon, a native of Friesexcessive, a quarrelsome and liti-land, who had been a Romish gious spirit prevailed among them, priest, and a notorious profligate, and drew upon them justly the dis-resigned his rank and office in the pleasure and indignation of many. Romish church, and publicly emBy affording refuge at this time braced the communion of the to the Beguins in their order, they || Anabaptists. became offensive to the bishops, Menno was born at Witmarand were hereby involved in dif- sum, a village in the neighbourficulties and perplexities of various hood of Bolswert, in Friesland, in kinds. They lost their credit in the year 1505, and died in 1561, the sixteenth century by their rus- in the duchy of Holstein, at the tic impudence, their ridiculous su-country seat of a certain nobleperstitions, their ignorance, cru- man not far from the city of elty, and brutish manners. They Oldesloe, who, moved with comdiscovered the most barbarous passion by the view of the perils aversion to the arts and sciences, to which Menno was exposed, and and expressed a like abhorrence the snares that were daily laid for of certain eminent and learned his ruin, took him, with certain men, who endeavoured to open of his associates, into his protecthe paths of science to the pur- tion, and gave him an asylum. suits of the studious youth, re- The writings of Menno, which are commended the culture of the almost all composed in the Dutch mind, and attacked the barbarism language, were published in folio of the age in their writings and at Amsterdam, in the year 1651. discourses. Their general charac- About the year 1537, Menno was ter, together with other circum-earnestly solicited by many of the stances, concurred to render a re-sect with which he connected himformation desirable, and to accom-self to assume among them the plish this happy event. rank and functions of a public

Among the number of Mendi- teacher; and, as he looked upon cants are also ranked the Capu- the persons who made this prochins, Recollects, Minims, and posal to be exempt from the fanaothers, who are branches or deri-tical phrenzy of their brethren at vations from the former. at Munster (though according to

Buchanan tells us, the Mendi- other accounts they were originalcants in Scotland, under an ap-ly of the same stamp, only renderpearance of beggary, lived a very ed somewhat wiser by their sufluxurious life; whence one witti-ferings), he yielded to their enly called them not Mendicant, but treaties. From this period to the Manducant friars. end of his life he travelled from MENNONITES, a sect in one country to another with his the United Provinces, in most re-wife and children, exercising his

doctrine of the wiser branches of that sect, who aimed at nothing more than the restoration of the Christian church to its primitive purity. Accordingly he condemned the plan of ecclesiastical disci

ministry, under pressures and ca- || tumultuous proceedings have been lamities of various kinds, that suc- recited under that article), but ceeded each other without inter-somewhat more severe, though ruption, and constantly exposed more clear and consistent than the to the danger of falling a victim to the severity of the laws. East and West Friesland, together with the province of Groningen, were first visited by this zealous apostle of the Anabaptists; from whence he directed his course into Hol-pline that was founded on the land, Guelderland, Brabant, and prospect of a new kingdom to be Westphalia; continued it through miraculously established by Jethe German provinces that lie on sus Christ on the ruins of civil the coast of the Baltic sea, and pe- government and the destruction netrated so far as Livonia. In all of human rulers, and which had these places his ministerial labours been the fatal and pestilential were attended with remarkable source of such dreadful commosuccess, and added to his sect a tions, such execrable rebellions, prodigious number of followers. and such enormous crimes. He Hence he is deservedly consider- declared publicly his dislike of ed as the common chief of almost that doctrine which pointed out all the Anabaptists, and the parent the approach of a marvellous reof the sect that still subsists under formation in the church by the that denomination. Menno was a means of a new and extraordinary man of genius, though not of a effusion of the Holy Spirit. He very sound judgment: he posses- expressed his abhorrence of the sed a natural and persuasive elo- licentious tenets which several of quence, and such a degree of learn- the Anabaptists had maintained ing as made him pass for an oracle with respect to the lawfulness of in the estimation of the multitude. polygamy and divorce; and, fiHe appears, moreover, to have nally, considered as unworthy of been a man of probity, of a meek toleration those fanatics who and tractable spirit, gentle in his were of opinion that the Holy manners, pliable and obsequious Ghost continued to descend into in his commerce with persons of the minds of many chosen believall ranks and characters, and ex-ers, in as extraordinary a manner tremely zealous in promoting prac- as he did at the first establishtical religion and virtue, which he ment of the Christian church, and recommended by his example as that he testified his peculiar prewell as by his precepts. The sence to several of the faithful by plan of doctrine and discipline miracles, predictions, dreams, and drawn up by Menno was of a visions of various kinds. He much more mild and moderate retained, indeed, the doctrines nature than that of the furious commonly received among the and fanatical Anabaptists (whose Anabaptists, in relation to the

that they are not Anabaptists either in principle or by origin. However, nothing can be more certain than this fact, viz. that the first Mennonite congregations were composed of the different sorts of Anabaptists; of those who had been always inoffensive and upright, and of those who, before their conversion by the ministry of Menno, had been seditious fanatics: besides, it is alleged, that the Mennonites do actually retain at this day some of those opinions and doctrines which led the seditious and turbulent Anabaptists of old to the commision of so many and such enornous crimes: such particularly is the doctrine concerning the nature of Christ's kingdom, or of the church of the New Testa ment, though modified in such a manner as to have lost its noxious qualities, and to be no longer pernicious in its influence.

baptism of infants; the millennium, or one thousand years reign of Christ upon earth; the exclusion of magistrates from the Christian church; the abolition of war; and the prohibition of oaths en joined by our Saviour, and the vanity, as well as the pernicious effects of human science. But while Menno retained these doctrines in a general sense, he explained and modified them in such a manner as made them resemble the religious tenets that were universally received in the Protestant churches; and this rendered them agreeable to many, and made them appear inoffensive even to numbers who had no inclination to embrace them. It, however, so happened, that the nature of the doctrines considered in themselves, the eloquence of Menno, which set them off to such advantage, and the circumstances of the times, gave a high degree of credit to the religious system of The Mennonites are subdivided this famous teacher among the into several sects, whereof the two Anabaptists, so that it made a ra-principal are the Flandrians, or pid progress in that sect. And Flemingians, and the Waterlandthus it was in consequence of the ians. The opinions, says Moministry of Menno that the dif-sheim, that are held in common ferent sorts of Anabaptists agreed by the Mennonites, seem to be all together in excluding from their derived from this fundamental communion the fanatics fanatics that principle-that the kingdom which dishonoured it, and in renouncing Christ established upon earth is a all tenets that were detrimental to visible church, or community, into the authority of civil government, which the holy and just alone are and by an unexpected coalition to be admitted; and which is conformed themselves into one com-sequently exempt from all those munity. institutions and rules of discipline that have been invented by human wisdom for the correction and reformation of the wicked. This principle, indeed, was avowed by the ancient Mennonites, but it is

theians.

Though the Mennonites usually pass for a sect of Anabaptists, yet M. Herman Schyn, a Mennonite minister, who has published their history and apology, maintains, VOL. II.

now almost wholly renounced: of less moment. However, this nevertheless, from this ancient austere system declines, and the doctrine many of the religious rigid Mennonites are gradually opinions that distinguish the Men-approaching towards the opinions nonites from all other Christian and discipline of the more modecommunities seem to be derived. | rate, or Waterlandians.

The first settlement of the Mennonites in the United Provinces was granted them by William, prince of Orange, towards the close of the sixteenth century; but it was not before the following century that their liberty and tranquillity were fixed upon solid foundations, when, by a confession of faith published in the year 1626, they cleared themselves from the imputations of those pernicious and detestable errors that

In consequence of this doctrine,] they admit none to the sacrament of baptism but persons that are come to the full use of their reason; they neither admit civil rulers into their communion, nor allow any of their members to perform the functions of magistracy; they deny the lawfulness of repelling force by force; and consider war, in all its shapes, as unchristian and unjust: they entertain the utmost aversion to the execution of justice, and more es-had been laid to their charge. In pecially to capital punishments: order to appease their intestine and they also refuse to confirm their testimony by an oath. The particular sentiments that divided the more considerable societies of the Mennonites are the following: The rigid Mennonites, called the Flemingiuns, maintain with various degrees of rigour the opinions of their founder Menno, as to the human nature of Christ, alleging that it was produced in the womb of the Virgin by the creating power of the Holy Ghost; the obligation that binds us to wash the feet of strangers, in consequence of our Saviour's command; the necessity of excommunicating and avoiding, as one would do the plague, not only avowed sinners, but also all those who depart, even in some light instances pertaining to dress, &c., from the simplicity of their ancestors; the contempt due to human learning; and other matters

discords, a considerable part of the Anabaptists of Flanders, Germany, and Friesland, concluded their debates in a conference held at Amsterdam in the year 1650, and entered into the bonds of fraternal communion, each reserving to themselves a liberty of retaining certain opinions. This association was renewed and confirmed by new resolutions in the year 1649; in consequence of which the rigorous laws of Menno and his successors were in various respects mitigated and corrected. See ANABAPTISTS.

MEN OF UNDERSTANDING. This title distinguished a denomination which appeared in Flanders and Brussels in the year 1511. They owed their origin to an illiterate man, whose name was Egidius Cantor, and to William of Hildenison, a Carmelite monk. They pretended to be honoured