Democracy ant> iReUgion.

19

himself in the multitude of things, the Rembrandt in whose works the contours of earthly things areblended and blurred with divine light. Andfinally the Quaker movement had a third root inthe contemporary German mysticism, above allin Jacob Boehme , very early translated, whoseinfluence is shown also in the " Behmenites " ofthe Cromwellian army. The same spirit speaksthrough the mystic Angelus Silesius , at one timea Leyden student, and steeped in the religiousatmosphere of the Netherlands , who has becomeagain a living writer to modern Germany . WhatRufus Jones says about the origin and the spiritualrelations of the Quakers applies as well to the earlyEnglish Baptists , the leader of whom, John Smyth, 1planned even to amalgamate with the DutchMennonites. It also applies to the sects, mostlyBaptist by origin, which culminated in the Crom-wellian army.

As we have no intention to give a detailed his-torical review, we will try to characterise by ashort resume the main ideas of this world of sectsfrom which Democracy crystallised out towardsthe end of the seventeenth century.

1. The fundamental point of the so-calledReform of the Reformation is Immanence of God inthe human soul. From this central conceptioncomes the rejection of Predestination as formu-lated by Calvin, and the rejection of the substitu-tionary theory of the death of Jesus, as taught byLuther. Against Calvin stands the firm and

1 W. T. Whitley, The Works of John Smyth, Cambridge,1915, Introduction, p. 109.