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Swartbntore Xectuve.

It was this second wave of the Reformation ,called by its adherents in England the " Reform ofthe Reformation, " that gave to the world democracy.The despised " step-children " of the Reformation —to use the expression of Troeltsch —were theancestors of the modern state. This second wavewelled up in Germany in the sixteenth century, butit was there suppressed by fire and sword. Thesurviving remnants, revived by Menno Simons ,fled to Holland and thence to England , where theirlife was merged in those sects which rejected theCalvinist as well as the Episcopal Church , theParliament as well as the King. They called inquestion the whole system of church and state, allhierarchies inherited from old days. These ideasof " base people," as Bacon called them, had animmense development and this is the true markof all of Quakerism, which became the heir andtrustee of the Reform of the Reformation.

The distinguished American scholar, Rufus M.Jones , has made the origin of Quakerism clear in aseries of profound and penetrating volumes. OnGerman and Dutch soil the movement had threeroots. The first was the community of GermanBaptists and Mennonites , especially the Water-lander Mennonites who already practised silentworship without visible sacraments. The secondroot is that circle of " Spiritual Reformers " thatgathered in Holland about Erasmus , that inter-denominational and international atmospherewhich found its focus in Amsterdam between 1600 and1650. It has a spiritual relationship with Spinoza and Rembrandt, the Spinoza to whom God unfolds