26 Swartbmore lecture.

Baptists with death by fire, those of them thatshowed " repentance," with beheading, and thewomen with the punishment of being buriedalive.

This cruelty of the persecution to which theywere subjected explains much of the eccentricitiesof the Minister Baptists. Influenced by thereports of their enemies, we are inclined to thinkof them as a horde of savages. Remember thatpolygamy was only introduced in a besieged city,when women by far outnumbered the men, andthat at the same time Luther had advised HenryVIII of England and the Landgrave of Hesse thatpolygamy was not opposed to Christian ethics.The famous American historian Bancroft, was thefirst to point out the lineage between Munster andRhode Island . "This Colony," he adds, "iswitness that the paths of the Baptists were thepaths of freedom and peace."

After the downfall of the earthly Jerusalem inMunster the German and Dutch Baptist move-ment under the influence of Menno Simon renouncedthe method of violence.

In England also both tendencies continued toshow life. The representatives of force gatheredinto Cromwell's army, and their convictions sur-vived in the expansive sect of the Baptists , andhardly less in the religious undertone that soundsthrough British Imperialism from Cromwell to CecilRhodes .

Even George Fox in his early days appealed tothe Protector to establish the hegemony over theMediterranean by the Commonwealth fleets. This