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One of the commonest errors classes the Baptists of Holland with the Münster insurrection, chiefly because John of Leyden and others from that country took part in that outbreak. Keller corrects this error thus: ‘No one who impartially studies the history of Menno Simon and of John of Leyden can deny that the doctrines and the spirit of the two men were infinitely unlike, and much more unlike than, for example, the doctrines and spirit of the Lutheran and Catholic Churches.’ The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: ‘That after the Münster insurrection the very name "Anabaptist" was proscribed in Europe.’ This of itself introduced confusion in tracing their history, because the name ceased to identify any specific sect, and classified immense numbers of men with the Münster uproar who were no more connected with it than the pope himself. But says this authority: ‘It must be remembered that Menno and his followers expressly repudiated the distinctive doctrines of the Münster Anabaptists. . . . They never aimed at any social or political revolution, and have been as remarkable for sobriety of conduct as the Minister sect was for its fanaticism.’ Menno himself says: ‘I warned every man against the Münster abominations, in regard to a king, to polygamy, to a worldly kingdom, and to the use of the sword, most faithfully.’

Ypeig and Dermout tell us that the Netherland Baptists were much scattered until 1536, when they obtained the position of a regular community separated from the German and Dutch Protestants; but at that time they had not been formed into one body by any band of union. This privilege was obtained for them by the sensible course of Menno Simon.

MENNO SIMON was born in Friesland, in 1492. He was thoroughly educated and possessed large native powers. He became a Catholic priest, but in due time went to Luther for counsel in seeking his soul’s salvation. He tells us little of the result, but details fully the impression which the martyrdom of Snyder made upon his mind. Sicke Snyder, so called because he was a tailor by trade, was slaughtered at Leenwarden in 1531, by the sword, his body laid on the wheel and his head set upon a stake, because he had been rebaptized. Menno says: ‘I heard from some brethren that a God-fearing man had been beheaded because he had renewed his baptism. This sounded wonderfully in my ears, that any one should speak of another baptism. I searched the Scriptures with diligence, and reflected earnestly upon them, but could find no trace of infant baptism.’

He says that he consulted Luther’s writings on that subject, who told him: ‘We must baptize them on their own faith, because they are holy;’ but he could not see that they were holy, or that they had any ‘faith’ if they were. He went to Bucer, who told him that: ‘We should baptize them in order to bring them up in the ways of the Lord.’ He went to Bullinger, who said that we should baptize all our children because the Jews circumcised their sons. Then, as none of them gave him scriptural authority in the case, he went to the Bible as his only guide, and finding it silent on the subject, he cast the doctrine aside as a human figment, united with a Baptist church and began to preach the Gospel. For a quarter of a century he did the work of an evangelist from country to country, enduring every sort of suffering for Jesus’ sake, and established churches in Friesland, Holland, Brabant, Westphalia and the German provinces on the Baltic. One Reynerts sheltered Menno in his house, but this was a crime, and while the preacher escaped, his heroic host died a martyr rather than betray him. Blunt says that his followers became ‘notorious for their deference to the Scripture, and, instead of claiming an inspiration superior to it, bowed down to the most literal interpretation of its precepts.’ The Lord of Fresenburg, from admiration of the purity of his disciples, invited them to settle on his estate in Holstein and promised them protection. Many fled there, who established churches, and there Menno died in peace, 1559.

The two Dutch historians quoted so largely already say of him that he excluded from the community ‘some of the so-called perfect who had either taken part in the riots or had not disapproved of them. He also excluded and gave over to the contempt of the brethren all the rest, who could not be checked in their wicked fanaticism by his sensible instructions. His abhorrence of these perverse men was so strong that he was not only ashamed of them, but he counted it a sin to eat and drink with them. As he also inspired others with the same abhorrence of their conduct, the whole community of Baptists was soon freed from the loathsome leaven of the riotous "Anabaptists." Through his instructions also the tolerably pure doctrines of some Baptists were made purer; much more nearly allied to the spirit of true Christianity. It was one of his fundamental principles that in the search for religious doctrines nothing should be embraced that is not found in the Holy Scriptures, and in the use and application of these mere human deductions should be avoided.’ [Ypeig and Dermout, History of the Dutch Baptists, chap. on Dutch Baptists]

Whether he was ever immersed is a matter in dispute. Scheffer thinks that he was not, although he says that ‘in Germany, until 1400, there was no other method than immersion.’ It is clear that after that date the method changed, and that the Mennonites practiced pouring, at an advanced stage in their history. Menno’s great testimony lodged against infant baptism, for which he and his people, in common with all the so-called ‘Anabaptists’ of the Netherlands, endured great persecution. The accounts given of their sufferings by such secular historians as Motley, as well as by the martyrologists, are horrible in the extreme. Christians of various sects were butchered in cold blood, so that, in five-and-twenty years, under Charles V, 50,000 persons are said to have been hanged, beheaded and buried or burnt alive in the Netherlands alone. A very large proportion of these were Baptists. June 10, 1535, a furious decree was fulminated at Brussels, calling for the death of this entire people. Even if they recanted they were to die by the sword instead of fire, the women were to be buried alive, and all persons were forbidden to petition for any grace, favor or forgiveness for them. Before suffering death in any of its sanguinary forms, these helpless victims were generally put to the rack. Motley thus describes this atrocity:

‘The rack was the court of justice; the criminal’s only advocate was his fortitude. . . . The victim, whether man, matron or tender virgin, was stripped naked and stretched upon the wooden bench. Water, weights, pullies, screws, all the apparatus by which the sinews could be strained without cracking, the bones crushed without breaking, and the body racked exquisitely without giving up the ghost, was now put in operation. The executioner, enveloped in a black robe from head to foot, with his eyes glaring at his victim through holes cut in the hood which muffled his face, practiced successively all the forms of torture which the devilish ingenuity of the monks had invented. The imagination sickens when striving to keep pace with these dreadful realities.’ [Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, i, pp. 223,224]

It was more common to bury the women alive than the men, and it was done generally in this manner. A coffin was made, so small that the poor wretch must be squeezed into it without room to struggle, with holes for iron bars to keep the body down. After laying it on a scaffold and forcing the body into it, a cord was run through the bottom of the coffin, tied round the neck and violently drawn tight. Then earth was thrown upon it, and the living burial was completed. Dr. Rule relates the case of a harmless woman at Leenwarden, 1548, in whose house a Latin Testament was found. She was put on the rack and asked whether she ‘expected to be saved by baptism?’ She answered, ‘No; all the water in the sea cannot save me, nor any thing else but that salvation which is in Christ, who has commanded me to love the Lord my God above all things, and my neighbor as myself.’ A printer at Hesvelt was beheaded because he had put this note into one of the printed Bibles: ‘The salvation of mankind springs from Christ alone.’ About 1549, the Baptists were persecuted with great vigor. Twenty of them lay in prison at Amsterdam, when all but five men and three women made their escape. Elbert Jansen, a lame man, might have escaped but refused, and on the 20th of March he, with seven others, was burnt, on the charge ‘that they had suffered themselves to be rebaptized and had wrong notions of the sacraments.’ Rule mentions nine other men at Amsterdam who, for being Baptists, were taken out of their beds and removed to the Hague. There they were beheaded and their heads sent back to Amsterdam in a herring-barrel, where they were set upon stakes. Hans of Overdam was put to death in Ghent in 1550. He was a talented man, of gentle but indomitable spirit and of great spirituality. In the touching account of his sufferings it is said that he thus addressed his brethren:

‘Dearly beloved, it is not enough that we have received baptism on the confession of our faith and by that faith have been engrafted into Christ, unless we hold fast the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. The Council began to speak to us, why we were not satisfied with the faith of our parents and with our baptism. We said: We know of no infant baptism, but of a baptism upon faith, which God’s word teacheth us.’

The account of his arrest is most interesting. One Sunday morning himself and a friend had met in the woods to worship God, with a company of their brethren. They sought other brethren in vain for near an hour, and were about to return, but began to sing softly, that if their friends were at hand they might hear them. They heard a rustling and stopped, when three armed men stood before them. Hans said pleasantly: ‘Well, comrades, you have been seeking a hare and have not caught it.’ The three bid them surrender as prisoners; and immediately their eyes fell upon a wagon load of their brethren, who were guarded by three justices and their officers. Hans and his friend were then bound together in irons and led to the castle, about a mile distant. Here they were kept for three days and then taken to Ghent, where they met their betrayer. They were charged with holding ‘assemblies of this new doctrine,’ contrary to the order of the emperor. Hans replied: ‘It is not given him of God to make such laws; therein he exceeds the power granted him of God. In this matter we know him not as a ruler, for the salvation of our souls is dearer to us and we must give our obedience to God.’ They went through various examinations and disputations, but were finally condemned to death. The Procurer-general said: ‘The reason you are condemned as heretics is that various learned persons have disputed with you. and you have not suffered yourselves to be instructed.’

Motley, quoting at large from Brandt, records the noted case of Dirk Willemzoon, who was guilty of no crime but that of being a Baptist. Being sentenced to death, he made his escape over a frozen lake, late in the winter, when the ice had become weak. Three officers pursued him, and one of them breaking through, he cried for help, as he was drowning. The other two fled, but the tender-hearted Baptist left the shore at the peril of his life, flew across the cracking ice to his rescue, and the hero saved him. Having thus magnanimously rescued his enemy from death, he was himself burnt at the stake for his pains. [Dutch Republic, ii, p. 280] Time fails to enlarge upon these individual cases of suffering for Christ’s sake, for Baptists were tolerated nowhere. Other dissenters fled to lands where they were safe, but no voice pleaded for them, and no arm was raised for their defense; hence Ten Kate says that in the Netherlands they furnished ten martyrs where other Reformed sects gave one. The following figures are appalling. The Dutch Martyrologies mention in Ghent, 103; in the Province of Holland, III; at Antwerp, 229; and this ratio was kept up everywhere, except in the province of Groningen. Nor did it matter if they fled to other lands. The Martyrology relates the sufferings of 900 martyrs by name. and makes reference to 1,000 others. Lihencron collected the martyr hymns of Lutherans and Baptists. He found three Lutheran hymns, commemorating four martyrs, but sixty-two Baptist hymns, extolling the steadfastness of three hundred brethren. De Hoop Scheffer says:

‘In 1635 the magistrates of Zurich undertook to compel the Mennonites by force to enter the Reformed Church. They were thrown into prison, and their property was confiscated. Schaffhausen, Berne and Basel joined hands with Zurich, and great cruelties were perpetrated. Berne sold a number of its Mennonites as slaves to the king of Sardinia, who used them on his galleys. In the course of about seventy years all Mennonites were expelled from Zurich, Schaffhausen and St. Gall.’ [Schaff-Herzog Ency., Art. Mennonites]

The minor forms of persecution were numberless. Baptists met where they could to hear the Gospel, in darkness, in barn, and brake, and bush, through cold, and snow, and hail. Dragoons hunted them by the light of moon and stars, to detect their secret places of meeting, and tragedy commonly followed, in one form or another. Their first crime was to worship God and administer baptism at midnight; then came separation from home, wife, child, parent and other kindred. Flight or banishment followed; arrest, imprisonment, inquisitors and torture were only the beginning of the end. Said a simple-hearted prisoner:

‘The chief reason for torturing me is to make me tell how many preachers there are, what their names and where they live, where I went to school, how many I have baptized, where I was ordained, and by whom. They wanted me to call the magistrates Christians, and say that infant baptism is right. Then I pressed my lips together, left it all with God and suffered patiently while I thought of the Lord’s words: "No one has greater love than this, that a man should die for his friends."’

Nothing was left undone to terrify them into recantation, but they were strangers to fear. ‘Let us not be frightened,’ said they. ‘Though the hounds bay, and the lions roar; for God, who is with us, is a mighty God and will keep his own.’ Ursula Werdum, a noble lady at Overyssel, was taken from her castle to the stake. Her mother and sister came from afar to change her mind, but their entreaties had no effect. On the way to execution she joined hands with one ‘Mary,’ who had been disowned by her family, and they sung the praises of God as they walked. They gave each other the kiss of peace and prayed for their persecutors. Mary begged the judges to shed no more innocent blood, but a priest drove Ursula from her and the burning pile. She turned back, saying that she wanted to go to the same glory, in the same way; and, turning to the stake, said: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’ ‘Yes.’ said the priest, ‘that’s where he is found.’ She replied: ‘Because I look for him there, I can face death here.’ When she ascended the pile her foot slipped, and the judge thought that she yielded. "No,’ said she, ‘the wood slipped; I will remain steadfast to Christ,’ and died.

Buckle quotes from the official report of the Venetian ambassador to the court of Charles V, made in 1546: ‘That in Holland and in Friesland more than 30,000 persons have suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist errors.’ [Hist. of Civilization, i, p. 189] No chapter in history is more horrible than that which records the persecutions of the Netherland Baptists under Charles V. He ordained the amputation of a hand or the extraction of an eye on every author or printer of their books. All the accused were to be examined as to the baptism of their babes, midwives were sworn to baptize new-born children, mothers whose infants were born away from home must bring baptismal certificates, and all pastors were commanded to keep baptismal registers, that the parents of the unchristened might be brought to punishment. State baptismal records have figured largely in the persecution of Baptists. They appear to have been created for that purpose first by Zwingli: ‘Because the Baptists have often said that they did not know whether they were baptized or not;’ he requested the Council at Zurich to record the names of each child, with its father and godmother, ‘as it will establish who are baptized, and Anabaptism will not be able to break in again overnight.’ Hence, according to Hofling (Sacrament of Baptism, 2,245,), on May 24, 1526, the keeping of registers was decreed, because ‘many people would not have their children baptized.’ Holland understood this way of entrapping Baptists as well as Switzerland.

The whole land was stricken with terror and the cries of the tortured were heard perpetually, gallows and trees on the highways were hung with dead bodies. Dr. Rule says: ‘The very air was polluted with the stench, and the knell of death sounded heavily from every belfry. [Duke] Alva gloated over the carnage.’ This fiend invented many new methods of torture for the amusement of the soldiery, amongst them the screwing of iron to the tongue and the burning of the end till it dropped off, and when the sufferer screamed they mocked at his fine ‘singing.’

Despite these persecutions they perpetually multiplied. Keller says that in 1530 there was scarcely a village or city in the Netherlands where Baptists were not found. Bullinger complains that the whole province of Belgium was infested with them; and Micronius wrote, that Menno’s kingdom not only extends through Belgium, but from ‘Flanders to Dantzic.’ In 1550 the leading reformed element, according to Ten Kate, was Baptist, and in Friesland, in 1586, one inhabitant in every four was a Baptist. The magistrates of Deventer refused admission to the inquisitors, saying: ‘We can make all the examination needful of the faith of our burghers. You have nothing to do in this matter, and we order you to leave without delay and never return on such an errand.’

Baptist industry and frugality distinguished them in trade and commerce. Peter Lioren, one of them, introduced the cat-boat and extended the herring and whale fisheries, to the enrichment of the nation. Halbertsma asks:

‘How was it possible to find better citizens? They brought into the treasury their thousands every year, and never took out a penny as officials. They set fire to no property, but dug wells to put out fires. They fired no musket, but they nursed the wounded. They were not soldiers, but they furnished the sinews of war.’

When men were martyred publicly a straw hut was built around the stake and the martyr consumed with it, so that he should neither be seen nor heard. Verbeck, a Baptist pastor, suffered in this way in Antwerp, 1561.

The people could endure this diabolical work no longer, and the States of Holland declared the PRINCE OF ORANGE Viceroy, in their determination to shake off at once the Spanish and Papal yoke. William had been governor of Holland under the king of Spain from 1559. In 1556, while still a Catholic himself, he wrote to his subordinates: ‘I have neither the will nor the means to help the Inquisition, or execute the placards. If peace is to be preserved in this land, liberty of worship must be guaranteed to every inhabitant. There must he a halt in persecution until an appeal can be made to the king.’ When he was required to uproot heresy he determined to surrender his office, and then to take up arms against Alva. Possibly he did not at once comprehend all that his motto meant, but when his brother, Lewis, marched into Guelderland his new note was, ‘Liberty of nation and conscience.’

A.D. 1572 the continent was still ablaze, however, with the tires of persecution, and human bodies were lighting men everywhere to a better day. Protestant raved against Catholic and Catholic against Protestant, and both against the Baptists. Philip of Hesse, the lone dissenter at the Diet of Spire, was the only prince of that day who was unwilling to dye his sword in innocent blood. He would imprison heretics and exile them to lands where they met with no mercy, but he would not slay them. And, possibly, inspired by his example, God was raising up a greater than he, who should defend every Christian against the blood-thirst of his brother Christian. No country was more thoroughly soaked with the blood of the saints than Holland, under Philip II of Spain, Duke Alva and the Inquisition, but its bitterest trial came in the opening of 1572, in its contest with the Spaniard.

As far back as 1559, the Prince of Orange was in Paris, when Henry II. told him that he and Philip had made a treaty to put all Netherland Protestants to the sword. At that time the young prince was but twenty-six, but he then and there mentally resolved to thwart that bloody policy by arousing the Protestant population of the Netherlands to throw off the Spanish yoke. In due time he appealed to them and to the courts of Northern Europe to aid him in rescuing Holland, but at first largely in vain. After several victories had awakened popular sympathy, his appeals for aid to the wealth of Holland were met with coldness and frowns. He had thrown all his own possessions into the contest, had even sold his plate and jewels and mortgaged his estates, to carry on the war against Spain, and was nearly obliged to abandon the attempt, when a trivial circumstance gave him new courage.

Early on an April morning, and oppressed with anxiety, he was walking near his headquarters at Dillenburg, when two simple strangers approached him and, taking him to be one of the royal household, asked if they could have an audience with the prince. He led them into the castle and made himself known. On asking who they were and their business, he found that they were Jacob Fredericks and Dirk Jans Cortenbosch, two Holland Baptist preachers. They had been visiting their brethren on the Rhine, and on their return home came to see whether they could serve the prince. They explained to him their principles, and he told them his general purposes and needs, asked them to urge their friends to contribute money to the advancement of the common Christian cause, and thanked them heartily when they promised to do so. On the 20th of the same month he issued the following decree: ‘Be it known to the magistrates and the officials in the North, that you are by no means to allow any one who preaches and observes the true word of God, according to the Gospel, to be hindered, injured or disturbed, or to have his conscience examined, or on that account to be persecuted by inquisition or placards.’ A fortnight later, May 5th, he sent his secretary with a letter to his Baptist friends pleading: ‘Let every one contribute. This is a time when even with small sums more can be effected than at other times with ampler funds. His lordship will ever be ready to reward them for such good and faithful service to the common cause and to their prince.’

With slight variations in minor things, Motley also touchingly details these circumstances. He says: ‘These appeals had, however, but little effect. Of three hundred thousand crowns, promised on behalf of leading nobles and merchants of the Motherlands by Marcus Perez, but ten or twelve thousand came to hand. The appeals to the gentlemen who had signed the compromise, and to many others who had, in times past, been favorable to the liberal party, were powerless. A poor Anabaptist preacher collected a small sum from a refugee congregation on the outskirts of Holland, and brought it, at the peril of his life, into the prince’s camp. It came from people, he said, whose will was better than the gift. They never wished to be repaid, he said, except by kindness, when the cause of reform should be triumphant in the Netherlands. The prince signed a receipt for the money, expressing himself touched by this sympathy from these poor outcasts. In the course of time, other contributions from similar sources, principally collected by dissenting preachers, starving and persecuted church-communities, were received. The poverty-stricken exiles contributed far more, in proportion, for the establishment of civil and religious liberty, than the wealthy merchants or the haughty nobles.’ The same author speaks of the prince, as conceiving ‘the thought of religious toleration in an age of universal dogmatism,’ for that ‘he had long thought that emperors, kings and popes had taken altogether too much care of men’s souls in times past, and had sent too many of them prematurely to their great account. He was equally indisposed to grant full powers for the same purpose to Calvinists, Lutherans or Anabaptists.’ [Motley, Dutch Republic, ii, p. 16]

Immediately on giving their promise the Baptists made the collections, but, owing to the loss of one of their collectors in the perilous undertaking and the poverty of their churches, their returns were delayed. Fifty years of unrelenting persecution had left them but little besides their patriotism; yet, on July 29th, they brought their patriotic offering of a thousand florins to the prince at Remund. The prince had faithfully kept his word. At a meeting of the Estates of Holland, July 15th, he had been declared governor, in place of the Duke of Alva; and had proclaimed that ‘the freedom of religion shall be guarded, every body shall exercise it freely in private or in public, in church or in chapel, without let or hinderance from any one.’ And eight days later, in camp, he made proclamation to protect Catholics. ‘No one, whether priest or layman, shall be wronged or injured in property or person;’ and offenders against this order were to be put to death, as malcontents and disturbers of the general quiet and welfare. When the Baptists made their offering to him out of the penury of their confiscation; burdened by hosts of widows and orphans, left by thousands of their martyrs, he asked them: ‘Do you make no demand?’ They answered, ‘Nothing but the friendship of your grace, if God grants to you the government of our Netherlands.’ He assured them of his sympathy for them and for all men. And he kept faith with them to the letter, although his fidelity involved him in perpetual turmoil with his best friends. Motley says that:

‘His intimate counselor, the accomplished Saint Aldegonde,’ was ‘in despair because the prince refused to exclude the Anabaptists of Holland from the rights of citizenship. At the very moment when William was straining every nerve to unite warring sects, and to persuade men’s hearts into a system by which their consciences were to be laid open to God alone, at the moment when it was most necessary for the very existence of the fatherland that Catholic and Protestant should mingle their social and political relations, it was indeed a bitter disappointment for him to see wise statesmen of his own creed unable to rise to the idea of toleration. "The affair of the Anabaptists," wrote Saint Aldegonde, "has been renewed. The prince objects to exclude them from citizenship. He answered me sharply, that their yea was equal to our oath, and that we should not press this matter unless we were willing to confess that it was just for the Papists to compel us to a divine service which was against our conscience." It seems hardly credible that this sentence, containing so sublime a tribute to the character of the prince, should have been indicted as a bitter censure, and that, too, by an enlightened and accomplished Protestant. "In short," continued Saint Aldegonde, with increasing vexation, "I don’t see how we can accomplish our wish in this matter. The prince has uttered reproaches to me that our clergy are striving to obtain a mastery over consciences. He praised lately the saying of a monk who was not long ago here, that our pot had not gone to the fire as often as that of our antagonists, but that when the time came it would be black enough. In short, the prince fears that after a few centuries the clerical tyranny on both sides will stand in this respect on the same footing."’ [Motley, Dutch Republic, iii, pp. 206,207]

Nor did it matter that his most intimate friends were offended with his broad toleration. Motley further says: ‘No man understood him. Not even his nearest friends comprehended his views, nor saw that he strove to establish, not freedom for Calvinism, but freedom for conscience. Saint Aldegonde complained that the prince would not persecute the Anabaptists, Peter Dathenus denounced him as an atheist, while even Count John, the only one left of his valiant and generous brothers, opposed the religious peace--except where the advantage was on the side of the new religion.’ [Motley, iii, p. 349] Again, he adds: ‘Sincerely and deliberately himself a convert to the Reformed Church, he was ready to extend freedom of worship to Catholics on the one hand and to Anabaptists on the other, for no man ever felt more keenly than he that the Reformer who becomes in his turn a bigot is doubly odious.’ [Motley, iii, p. 617] He moreover rebuked those who would interfere with his generous impulses and principles, as another remarkable passage from this distinguished writer will show:

‘The Prince of Orange was more than ever disposed to rebuke his own church for practicing persecution in her turn. Again he lifted his commanding voice in behalf of the Anabaptists of Middleburg. He reminded the magistrates of that city that these peaceful burghers were always perfectly willing to bear their part in all the common burdens, that their word was as good as their oath, and that as to the matter of military service, although their principles forbade them to bear arms, they had ever been ready to provide and pay for substitutes. "We declare to you, therefore," said he, "that yon have no right to trouble yourselves with any man’s conscience, so long as nothing is done to cause private harm or public scandal. We therefore expressly ordain that you desist from molesting these Baptists, from offering hinderance to their handicraft and daily trade by which they can earn bread for their wives and children, and that you admit them henceforth to open their shops and to do their work, according to the custom of former days. Beware, therefore, of disobedience and of resistance to the ordinance which we now establish."’ [Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, iii, p. 334]

In William’s letter to Middleburg, 1577, he praises the Baptists, who had brought their contributions at the peril of life, and had ‘helped to win liberty.’ In the previous year, when writing to induce Amsterdam to join the States, he had said: ‘I am determined to oppress no man’s conscience, and to force no one to adopt my religion.’ When, therefore, in 1577, the Reformed preachers, headed by Vander Heiden and Jan Paffin, tried to persuade him to limit the liberty of the Baptists, he replied that ‘the time is past for the clergy to assume control over consciences, and attempt to subject all men to their opinions.’