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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 ).

The Anabaptists of 16th century Europe are sometimes considered to be religious forerunners of modern anarchism.

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.

The Anabaptists tended to make a nominal distinction between faith and obedience.

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.

Zwingli also clashed with the Anabaptists, which resulted in their persecution.

Calvinists, Anabaptists and Mennonites, angry with their being persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church and opposed to the Catholic images of saints ( which in their eyes conflicted with the Second Commandment ), destroyed statues in hundreds of churches and monasteries throughout the Netherlands.

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

For example, some Amish and Mennonites came to the Palatinate and surrounding areas from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, where, as Anabaptists, they were persecuted, and so their stay in the Palatinate was of limited duration.

The Anabaptists claimed Oecolampadius for their views, but in a disputation with them he dissociated himself from most of their positions.

However the term has its origin in the descriptions of Eusebius of Caesarea and John of Damascus of mortalist views among Arab Christians, In the 1960s also this phrase was applied also to the views of Tyndale, Luther and others engaged in mortal introspection, from awareness that Calvin's term Psychopannychia originally described his own belief, not the belief he was calling error as well as in view of the Anabaptists, since their own writings held that the soul dies and the dead sleep.

It is important to avoid confusing it with the Catholic excommunication as it is normally practiced to-day based on the word " excommunication ", as the current Catholic practice favors maintaining some relationship with the excommunicant whereas the herem is more akin to " shunning " as practiced by Anabaptists and some of their descendant communities.

He first encountered Anabaptists in Klagenfurt and soon thereafter was converted to their belief.

Under Hutter's leadership, several of the congregations adopted the early Christian practice of communal ownership of goods, in additions to their Anabaptists beliefs of nonviolence, and adult baptism.

* Bernese Anabaptists and their American Descendants, by Delbert L. Grätz

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.

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.

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

While Marx and Engels struggled with the intricacies of industrial capitalism and modern modes of production, Weitling revived the apocalyptic politics of the sixteenth-century Münster Anabaptists and their gory attempts to usher in the Second Coming.

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 mirrors older arguments, especially by the Anabaptists, e. g. Mennonites, Amish, that one must accept all personal moral and spiritual liability of all harms done at any distance in space or time to anyone by one's own choices.

Other confessions had acquired popular, if not legal, legitimacy in the intervening decades and by 1555, the reforms proposed by Luther were no longer the only possibilities of religious expression: Anabaptists, such as the Frisian Menno Simons ( 1492 – 1559 ) and his followers ; the followers of John Calvin, who were particularly strong in the southwest and the northwest ; and the followers of Huldrych Zwingli were excluded from considerations and protections under the Peace of Augsburg.

* 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.

" While within historical Anabaptism numerous variations occurred, the comparison of Anabaptism with Protestantism highlights a consistent core of faith and practice among the Anabaptists.

Most Anabaptists held that both the Old and New Testaments were the word of God, while insisting that the New Testament was the rule of faith and practice for the church.

Obbe led the Dutch Anabaptists until around 1540, but lost faith in the Anabaptist way and withdrew from the church.