Upon the authority of Balthazar Hubmor (whom I suppose to be the Hubmeyer of the Cyclopædia), the Martyr-book states that Zwingle, etc., imprisoned at one time twenty persons of both sexes, in a dark tower, never more to see the light of the sun. This early Swiss Protestant persecution occurred, it will be observed, about 1526, and the latest recorded in the Martyr-book in or about 1672, covering a period of nearly one hundred and fifty years.[11]
At the same time that the Swiss Baptists were suffering at the hands of other Protestants, Anabaptists of the peaceful class were found in Holland in large numbers. The record of their sufferings and martyrs (says Appleton’s Cyclopædia) furnished a touching picture in human history. William of Orange, founder of the Dutch republic, was sustained in the gloomiest hours by their sympathy and aid.[12] That great prince, however importuned, steadily refused to persecute them.
Menno Symons, born at the close of the fifteenth or the commencement of the sixteenth century, educated for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic church, converted in manhood to the faith of the Anabaptists, became their chief leader. Mennonites and Anabaptists have from his time been interchangeable terms.[13]
It was about seventeen years after the drowning of Mentz in Switzerland, and while the Catholic persecution was raging in Holland, that in the year 1543 an imperial edict was issued against Menno; for both parties persecuted the Baptists,—the Catholics in the Low Countries, the Protestants in Switzerland. The Martyr-book tells us that a dreadful decree was proclaimed through all West Friesland, containing an offer of general pardon, the favor of the emperor, and a hundred carlgulden to all malefactors and murderers who would deliver Menno into the hands of the executioners. Under pain of death, it was forbidden to harbor him; but God preserved and protected him wonderfully, and he died a natural death, near Lubeck, in the open field, in 1559, aged sixty-six. It is further mentioned that he was buried in his own garden.[14]
About fourteen years after the death of Menno, or in the year 1573, we read in the Martyr-book that Dordrecht had submitted to the reigning prince, William of Orange, the first not to shed blood on account of faith or belief.
But the toleration which William extended to the Baptists was not imitated by his great compeer, Elizabeth of England. For the Martyr-book tells us that in 1575 “some friends,” who had fled to England, having met in the suburbs of London “to hear the word of God,” were spied out, and the constable took them to prison. Two of these were burnt at Smithfield, in the eighteenth year of Elizabeth. Jan Pieters was one of them, a poor man whose first wife had been burnt at Ghent; he then married a second, whose first husband had been burnt at the same place.
Thus it befell the unfortunate Jan that while his wife was burnt by Catholics, he himself suffered at the hands of English Protestants.[15]
The expression “sheep” or “lambs,” which is applied to some of the Baptist martyrs, alludes, I suppose, to their non-resistance. Thus, in 1576, Hans Bret, a servant, whose master was about to be apprehended, gave him warning, so that he escaped, but himself, “this innocent follower of Christ, fell into the paws of the wolves.... As he stood at the stake, they kindled the fire, and burnt this sheep alive.”