ANABAPTISTS (Greek),Cive,again,A2irricetv to baptize), those who baptize again persons admitted to their communion, when such con verts have been baptized in their infancy or have been merely sprinkled and not immersed in baptism or have been baptized in any way without being capable of declaring the doc trines which they believe and giving a reason for the hope that is in them. Baptists (q.v.) of the present day are not properly to be styled Anabaptists, as they lay no capital emphasis upon the necessity for rebaptism, although they have very definite canons on the subject of im mersion.
Anabaptists of the early In the 3d century of the Christian era, the century which witnessed such violent and bitter con troversies, the question of baptism came also under discussion. In the Eastern Church, in cluding Asia Minor, Egypt, northeastern Africa and Constantinople, it was definitely maintained that baptism was invalid unless it was administered by one of the clergy with proper matter and form. In the Western Church, including Italy, Gaul, Spain and north western Africa, it was held that the virtue of baptism lay in the invocation of the Trinity and the ceremonial sprinkling with or immer sion in the water. Any baptism thus admin istered by a person of either sex, by a clergy man or a layman, was equally valid. When two children in their play mimicked the act of a priest whom they had seen baptizing an in fant, Saint Augustine of Hippo declared that the who had been thus baptized by his companion was a real and actual partaker of the benefits and bound by all the vows per taining to this sacrament. The controversy between the East and the West continued, however, to rage with such fury that two councils were called to settle the question. The one was held in Iconium, Asia Minor, in 235, the other at Synnada in 256. At these theolog ical synods the decision arrived at was that rebaptism was unnecessary for those who had been baptized by heretics. The storm of con troversy swept westward to northern Africa as far as Carthage, where Tertullian supported the position of the Eastern Church in con trariety to that of Saint Augustine and other Western doctors. Agrippinus, bishop of Car
thage, maintained against the bishop of Rome that baptism under certain circumstances ought to be repeated. His followers were called Agrippinians and his defiance of the bishop of Rome took the form of a concilier decree which was issued by a synod which he convened and which endorsed the sentence of Iconium. In the year 253 Stephen, bishop of Rome, fulmi nated a bull of excommunication against all the bishops of Asia Minor, including Cappadocia, Galatia and Phrygia, whom he styled Rcbap tizers and Anabaptists, in an opprobrious sense.
Munster Anabaptists.— In the 16th cen tury there arose in' Europe a religious sect known as Anabaptists, whose main tenets car ried the principles of the Reformation to the extreme limit of that revolutionary movement. Their principles were those of revolt against mediaeval feudalism just as much as against ecclesiastical authority. They were socialists as well as reformers, mystics and fanatics. Their existence was one of the results of the Renaissance as interpreted to the common mind. Their views were democratic and in dividualistic. They rejected all authority, all tradition, all dogma, everything in short that militated against the absolute independence of the individual mind and spirit. This ten dency acquired at length the character not only of liberty but of license, and the term Ana baptist has thus become associated with every extreme, not only of license but of licentious ness, of rebellion and political outlawry. It is quite absurd to associate the term Anabaptist as employed historically with any phase of Christian thought, practice or opinion. It really is a term applied to those who at a turn ing point in the history of European thought, social, political and religious, became intoxi cated with the idea of individual liberty and the result was violence and excess of the worst character.