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6lmons THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

avails before God is a living and saving power which is, through the preaching of the holy Word, wrought of God in the heart, renewing, changing and regenerating it to newness of mind " (i. 59). On the Christian ordinances Menno says: " All the rites ordained of God, both in the Old and New Testament, have been instituted that our faith may be exercised and our obedience proven " (i. 34). The baptism of infants is invalid. Incidentally baptism is spoken of as the reception of " a handful of water " (i. 38, i. 124). Menno also observes that " the poor world has hitherto believed the new birth to consist in immersion in the water while the words are said, I baptize thee," etc. (ii. 215). He did not hold that believers' baptism to be valid must be administered by a representative of a church that is entirely orthodox. On the Lord's Supper his teaching concurs with that of Zwingli; he disapproves of " open " communion.

Menno defines the Church as the assembly of those " who hear, believe, accept, and rightly fulfil " the teachings of God's Word (ii.

4. The 345), hence a true Christian church is Church. necessarily established on the volun tary principle. He says: " Faith is the gift of God, therefore it can not be forced upon any one by worldly authorities or by the sword." " Tell me, kind reader, where have you in all the days of your life read in the apostolic Scriptures that Christ or the apostles called upon the power of the magistracy against those who would not hear their doctrine and obey their word? " (ii. 71). " Be hold how haughtily and how wickedly the princes assume, without any awe or fear, the authority of God and the ofce of the Holy Ghost " (i. 186). Toleration, accordingly, means the rejection of all persecution. Menno would have taken it as an in sult had he been charged with advancing the mod ern idea that false doctrine is, on the ground of Christian love and forbearance, to be tolerated in the Church. The government of the Church was administered by the elders. Questions of faith and practise were not to be referred to individual con gregations. The idea that among the early Men nonites " every church was a law unto itself " is erroneous. Menno and his colaborers withdrew from congregations that sanctioned what they be lieved to be unscriptural doctrine. The great mis sionary commission of Christ was held by Menno to have been given to the Church; he was in fact preeminently a missionary. With emphasis he in sists on the duty of the Church to care for needy and destitute members. He testifies that notwith standing the relentless, bloody persecution which had left in their care numerous widows and orphans, and in which many had lost their possessions, no one of the church which he represented, nor their children, had been known or would have been per mitted to beg (ii. 309). The Church, according to Menno, is the " communion of saints " in deed and in truth; nevertheless there is always a possibility of those having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof being found in it. In his writings he refereed to the fact that there was a hypocrite even among the apostles, but insists that neither offensive sin and transgression nor false doctrine 426

must be tolerated in the Church. Of church discipline he says: " In short, as a vineyard without a fence or inclosure, or a city without walls or gates, so is a church without discipline and the excommunication." Members of the church were not permitted to eat or do business with those who had been excluded, except in cases of emergency (I Cor. v. 11; II Thess. iii. 14). On this point both Menno and Dirk Philips wrote treatises against; the Swiss Brethren who disapproved of the " avoidance " of the excommunicated. The interesting history of this practise and the reasons why Menno advocated it can not be stated in a few sentences. That on his death-bed he expressed regrets for the stand which he had taken in this matter, as was believed by the " Waterlanders," who were of one mind with the Swiss, is evidently a fable. In the last weeks of his life he wrote a little book which was published after his death, insisting on " avoidance ' as stringently as ever.

The swearing of oaths he believed to be forbidden by Christ. Of war he speaks as a " wicked, abominable business " (i. 137). Capital punishment he considered incompatible with Christian principles; he suggests confinement for life in its stead (ii. 407). Frequently he denounced the " houses of intemperance," " the accursed drunken taverns." He was an advocate of "the simple life"; churchmembers who permitted themselves to drift into worldliness were strictly disciplined by the church. Menno believed the coming of Christ near, not, however, to inaugurate the millennium, but for judgment.

The old accusation of some of Menno's opponents that he denied the divine nature in Christ, an insinuation which was vigorously re-

g. Chris- pudiated by him, must be placed in tology. the same category as other slanders, such as that he upheld communism and was the head of a revolutionary sect. He held a peculiar doctrine on the Incarnation: " The whole Christ, God and man, man and God, is God's son and is of heaven" (ii. 151, Elkhart, Ind., 1871). Not only was he truly-God from eternity, but his human nature was also of heaven and was not the result of a creation. Of Mary's body he partook not otherwise than as a seed of grain partakes of the field in which it is planted (ii. 337). To assert that he could in that case not be truly human is to deny God's omnipotence. Had he, as regards his humanity, " been of the impure, sinful flesh of Adam, he would be guilty also, through the eternal justice of God, of judgment and death. And if he himself owed a debt, how could he pay ours ?" That this doctrine has a tendency toward the denial of Christ's divinity was indignantly denied by Menno. His opinion was, on the contrary, that what is generally considered the orthodox view of the incarnation dishonors Christ's divinity, repre senting him as a creature as concerns his body. " If the man [human nature of] Christ was of the flesh and blood of Mary, it is manifest that he was not God's son but a created being " (ii. 158). " That I have ever said this [that the Word was changed into flesh and blood] no one will, 1 believe, ever be able to prove; nevertheless they have the effrontery to