For the first few years of its existence Anabaptism remained true to its original theologico-ethical principles. The doctrine of non-resistance was strictly adhered to. The Brethren believed in themselves as the elect, and that they had only to wait in prayer and humility for the "advent of Christ and His saints," the "restitution of all things," the "establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth," or by whatever other phrase the dominant idea of the coming change was expressed. During the earlier years of the movement the Anabaptists were peaceable and harmless fanatics and visionaries. In some cases, as in Moravia, they formed separate communities of their own, some of which survived as religious sects long after the extinction of the main movement. In the earlier years of the fourth decade of the century, however, a change came over a considerable section of the movement. In Central and South-eastern Germany, notably in the Moravian territories, barring isolated individuals here and there, the Anabaptist party continued to maintain its attitude of non-resistance and the voluntariness of association which characterized it at first. The fearful waves of persecution, however, which successively swept over it were successful at last in partially checking its progress. At length the only places in this part of the empire where it succeeded in retaining any effective organization was in the Moravian territories, where persecution was less strong and the communities more closely knit together than elsewhere. Otherwise persecution had played sad havoc with the original Anabaptist groups throughout Central Europe. Meanwhile a movement had sprung up in Western and Northern Germany, following the course of the Rhine Valley, that effectually threw the older movement of Southern and Eastern Germany into the background. These earlier movements remained essentially religious and theological, owing, as Cornelius points out (_Muensterische Aufruhr_, vol. ii. p. 74), to the fact that they came immediately after the overthrow of the great political movement of 1552. But although the older Anabaptism did not itself take political shape, it succeeded in keeping alive the tendencies and the enthusiasm out of which, under favourable circumstances, a political movement inevitably grows. The result was, as Cornelius further observes, an agitation of such a sweeping character that the fourth decade of the sixteenth century seemed destined to realize the ideals which the third decade had striven for in vain.