Of Dissension and Division

...I stand; but that they have kept these, it will be useful for you to recount the rebellions of my fatherland, and the brotherly, hostile armies that rage and storm against one another so fiercely, to those who desire to know them.

V. What kind of fellows the Mennonites are. The Mennonites take their name from Menno Menno Simons, the Anabaptist religious reformer, who, after the destruction of the Dutch cobbler and tailor a derogatory reference to the radical Anabaptists of Münster at the clandestine meeting in Münster in Westphalia, gathered together the pieces of that sect with such apparent zeal after the breaking up of the Anabaptist rabble. And after he had brought the foolish dizziness and the raving of his predecessors into some order, he drew many to himself from Holland and Friesland, where they still swarm in such quantities—for weeds do not perish; a downpour comes to their aid sooner. They now hold some twenty or thirty congregations, each of which considers its own leader and its own swarm to be the right one. However, all recognize Menno as the originator of their superstition, from whose opinion the others are known. I could not present them as more shameful and unchaste than through the pure writing of P. Carolus Scribani, who speaks of him roughly as follows.

Menno’s impure doctrine. Carol. Scriban. Lib. 2. Cotrou. c. 7. Menno held Luther in somewhat higher esteem and regarded him as more sincere, as one who—when the wife refuses—sends and beckons to the maids. He therefore gives up all flesh to be ungirded and disgraced, and allows this to every man; and this from...