German Religious Life In Colonial Times PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter ii the separatists The first German emigration to America was of Separatists and the earliest emigrants were nearly all of this religious persuasion. The Separatists were of two sorts: those who separated themselves from the organized churches, the Lutheran and Reformed, and those who did not come out from any church, but formed groups or loosely cohering sects of their own. The latter kind were most commonly thrust out by persecution; the former, the "churchly Separatists," as they are called by Goebel in his "Geschichte des Christlichen Lebens," often left the Babylon of some established church from an exaggerated opinion of ecclesiastical corruption and their own superior righteousness. First of the Separatist emigration in point of time, number and importance were the Mennonites. These followers of Menno Simon had had surcease from severe persecution for more than a century when Penn made known among the Dutch Mennonites the plans for a colony of religious freedom. The Princes of the House of Orange, beginning with William the Silent, had found the "Weaponless Christians"--their chosen name--so peaceable, harmless and industrious that they had granted the sect a toleration expressly denied Anabaptists by the Peace of Westphalia. Thus Holland became the natural refuge of the Mennonites, and the centre of their church;--from that land went out help to the poor brethren in Germany; there were printed their Bibles and hymn books and Confession of Faith, and the ponderous history of their martyrs. In Germany they were settled in the Pfalz, invited thither by the elector, Karl Ludwig, in 1671; also in Elsass, reinforced by " the Switzers which were fled thither from Zurich."' These Anabaptists of the Palatinate were said to be...