from the Netherlands, and others found their way up the Rhine.[1] Crefeld is chiefly noted for its manufactures of silk, linen, and other woven goods, and these manufactures were first established by persons fleeing from religious intolerance.
From the Mennonites sprang the general Baptist churches of England, the first of them having an ecclesiastical connection with the parent societies in Holland, and their organizers being Englishmen who, as has been discovered, were actual members of the Mennonite church at Amsterdam.[2] It was for the benefit of these Englishmen that the well-known Confession of Faith of Hans de Ries and Lubbert Gerritz was written,[3] and according to the late Robert Barclay, whose valuable work bears every evidence of the most thorough and careful research, it was from association with these early Baptist teachers that George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, imbibed his views. Says Barclay: “We are compelled to view him as the unconscious exponent of the doctrine, practice, and discipline of the ancient and stricter party of the Dutch Mennonites.”[4] If this be correct, to the spread of Mennonite teachings we owe the origin of the Quakers, and
- ↑ Life of Gerhard Roosen, p. 5. Reiswitz und Waldzeck, p. 19.
- ↑ Barclay's Religious Societies, pp. 72, 73, 95.
- ↑ The preface to that Confession, Amsterdam, 1686, says: “Ter cause, also daer eenige Engelsche uyt Engeland gevlucht ware, om de vryheyd der Religie alhier te genieten, en alsoo sy een schriftelijcke confessie (van de voornoemde) hebben begeert, want veele van hare gheselschap inde Duytsche Tale onervaren zijnde, het selfde niet en konde verstaen, ende als dan konde de ghene die de Tale beyde verstonde de andere onderrechten, het welche oock niet onvruchtbaer en is ghebleven, want na overlegh der saecke zijn sy met de voernoemde Gemeente vereenight.”
- ↑ P. 77.
