Ambrosians is a term that might be applied either to members of one of the religious brotherhoods which at various times since the 14th century have sprung up in and around Milan or, exceptionally to a 16th century sect of Anabaptists.

As a result of their views on the nature of baptism and other issues, Anabaptists were heavily persecuted during the 16th century and into the 17th by both Magisterial Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Although Anabaptists began with the Radical Reformers in the 16th century, certain people and groups may still legitimately be considered their forerunners due to a similar approach to the interpretation and application of the Bible.

Hutterites () are a communal branch of Anabaptists who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century.

Although some Anabaptists in Amsterdam and Münster in the 16th century engaged in excesses, Dutch Mennonites generally became pious and peaceful.

The congregations of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite are descendants of the Anabaptists of the Radical Reformation of the 16th century.

The socialism of the 16th century was Christian and Anabaptist, though most Anabaptists never adopted a strict communal lifestyle.

The concept of believers ' baptism drew the main attention of 16th century Continental Anabaptists, but the mode was also an issue.

The 16th century Anabaptists were orthodox Trinitarians accepting both the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ and salvation through his death on the cross.

Unlike many of the 16th century Anabaptists, Rothmann held immersion to be the proper mode of baptism.

Abecedarians were a 16th century German sect of Anabaptists who affected an absolute disdain for all human knowledge, contending that God would enlighten his elect from within themselves, giving them knowledge of necessary truths by visions and ecstasies, with which human learning would interfere.

* Abecedarian, 16th century German sect of Anabaptists

Alexanderwohl Church families trace their roots to the Dutch Anabaptists of the 16th century.

In the 16th century, German Anabaptists were branded with a cross on their foreheads for refusing to recant their faith and join the Roman Catholic church.

This happened under the influence of ideas of the Anabaptists which were ideas also seen in the Donatists in North Africa in 311 A. D. ( Jack Hoad, The Baptist, London, Grace Publications, 1986, page 32 ) and these ideas then spread to Calvinists through the Congregationalist and Baptist movements, and to Lutherans through Pietism ( although much of Lutheranism recoiled against the Pietist movement after the mid-19th century ).

Menno Simons accepted this view, probably received from the peaceful Melchiorites Obbe and Dirk Philips, and it became the general belief of Dutch Anabaptists in the first century of their existence.

Rothmann's view of the incarnation would be the predominant view among Dutch Anabaptists in their first century of history ( though Hoffman is much more the source ).

Interpretation of the baptismal practices of the early church is important to groups such as Baptists and Anabaptists, who believe that infant baptism was a later development, yet the early Christian writings mentioned above, which date from the 2nd and 3rd century clearly show that the early Christians did maintain such practice.

Anabaptists ( Greek ἀνά " again, twice " + βαπτίζω " baptize ," thus " re-baptizers ") are Protestant Christians of the Radical Reformation of 16th-century Europe, although some consider Anabaptism to be a distinct movement from Protestantism.

Karl Kautsky however, in his Communism in Central Europe at the Time of the Reformation, notes that this picture of Anabaptist Münster is based almost entirely on accounts written by the Anabaptists ' enemies, who sought to justify their bloody reconquest of the city.

There were a variety of anarchistic religious movements in Europe during the Middle Ages, including the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit, the Klompdraggers, the Hussites, Adamites and the early Anabaptists.

Two Anabaptists, Caroli and Benoit, are to challenge you and William to a debate before the Council.

* The Hutterites or Hutterian Brethren are descendants of German, Swiss, and Tyrolean Anabaptists led by Jacob Hutter, who was burned at the stake in 1536 for refusing to renounce his faith.

says that ' infants ought to be baptized ;' that, dying in infancy, they ' shall undoubtedly be saved thereby, and else not ;' that the opinions of Anabaptists and Pelagians are ' detestable heresies, and utterly to be condemned.

The Pennsylvania Dutch are a people of various religious affiliations, most of them Lutheran or Reformed, but many Anabaptists as well.

However, the conspicuous austerity of life among many sects accused of antinomianism ( such as Anabaptists or Calvinists ) suggests that these accusations are often, or even mostly, made for rhetorical effect.

The Anabaptists, Barton W. Stone and the Holiness Movement are examples of this form of restorationism.

They are part of the post-reformation Anabaptists ( which include, among others, the Amish and Mennonites ), who rejected baptism of infants as a biblically valid form of baptism.

As such, diverse groups such as Adventists, Anabaptists, Baptists, Charismatics, Congregationalists, Evangelicals, Holiness churches, Lutherans, Methodists, Moravians, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Reformed, and Unitarians ( depending on one's classification scheme ) are all a part of the same family, and with further doctrinal variations within each group.

The Nebraska Amish are perhaps the most conservative group of Old Order Amish, descendants of the Anabaptists and Mennonites.

The Swiss Mennonites are the oldest and possibly the most influential body of Anabaptists.

Anabaptists ( originally a pejorative title, meaning " re-baptizers ", from Greek ανα and βαπτιζω ) are Christians of the Radical Reformation.

The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites descended from Dutch and mainly Germanic Prussian Anabaptists who established colonies in South Russian Empire ( present-day Ukraine ) beginning in 1789.

These core beliefs are shared by the Anabaptists who belong to the conservative Mennonite streams ( including the Old Order, horse-and-buggy-driving groups ) – who tend to dress distinctively and to live separately from mainstream society, thus avoiding higher education – as well as those modern Anabaptists who attend EMU and who go on to become physicians, nurses, social workers, counselors, lawyers, business people, teachers and other highly educated citizens fully functioning in the larger world.

Ridley denied that early church practices are normative for the present situation, and he linked such primitivist arguments with the Anabaptists.

During and after the Reformation, the word " Donatist " ( sometimes " neo-Donatist ") was commonly used by the magisterial reformers as an incriminating label for the more radical reformers such as the Anabaptists.

When a number of Flemish Anabaptists were taken by Elizabeth's government in 1572 and sentenced to be burnt, Foxe first wrote letters to the Queen and her council asking for their lives and then wrote the prisoners themselves ( having his Latin draft translated into Flemish ) pleading with them to abandon what he considered their theological errors.

Anabaptists required that baptismal candidates be able to make their own confessions of faith and so rejected baptism of infants.

However, the town was recaptured in 1535 ; the Anabaptists were tortured to death, their corpses were exhibited in cages, which can still be seen hanging on the Tower of St. Lambert's steeple.

His ideas appear to be a middle ground between the ways of the Reformation of Martin Luther, John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli, and the Radical Reformation of the Anabaptists.

Important similarities can be seen between his teachings and the Continental Anabaptists, and, to a lesser extent, the English Baptists, though no direct connections have been shown to exist.

The Mennonites, Swiss Brethren, South German Anabaptists, and Hutterites were not as concerned about mode, and, while not rejecting immersion, found pouring much more practical and believed it to be the Scriptural mode.

Under examination, he denied that he had made common cause with the Anabaptists and claimed to be no prophet but a mere witness of the Most High, but nevertheless refused the articles of faith proposed to him by the provincial synod.

Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, writes that the Anabaptists " repudiated all law, since they held that the good man will be guided at every moment by the Holy Spirit ... rom this premiss they arrive at communism ...." Prior to Leo Tolstoy, Christian anarchism found one of its most articulate exponents in Gerrard Winstanley, who was part of the Diggers movement in England during the English Civil War.

Though it is difficult to sum up almost five centuries of evolution and differentiation among the Anabaptists, five distinctive attributes of Anabaptist Christians can be discerned: Firstly, they do not practice infant baptism – they believe it is important for someone to be old enough to make a mature choice about whether to be baptized and to be a church member.

The Anabaptists took the opposite view and felt the Jesus had greatly reformed the Law and felt that Old Testament precepts could only be justified if they had been reaffirmed by Jesus.

David Joris tried to compromise by declaring the time had not yet come to fight against the authorities, and that it would be unwise to kill any ' infidel ' ( non-Anabaptists ), lest the Anabaptists themselves be seen as common thieves and killers.