In 1527, the Swiss Anabaptists issued a confession of faith at Schaffhausen. Its writer was Michael Sattler, an ex-monk who was martyred that same year. It was the first confession “in which Christian men claimed absolute religious freedom for themselves, and guaranteed absolute religious freedom to others.” This Baptist movement was the target of Protestant and Catholic persecution alike and its brave, spiritual men and women were driven to the martyr’s crown or to exile. Many fled to Holland. The torch of truth, the advanced ideas which they had received from the Waldensians and other pre-Reformation movements, were handed over to the Anabaptists of Holland. These increased in number rapidly under the toleration afforded them in that country. Menno Simons, a Roman priest, set to thinking by the martyrdoms about him, espoused their cause and doctrines. Baptized at the age of forty-four, he fled to Holland, where he became the leader of a host, which afterward bore his name, being called Mennonites. Charles V persecuted these Baptists, and fully fifty thousand were martyred. They were not exterminated, however, for God, as in other days, preserved a remnant to pass the torch of religious liberty on to others. [Illustration: Bell of First Baptist Church, Providence] Baptist refugees from Holland crossed over to England. Henry VIII, when he made himself head of the Church, ordered their arrest and banishment from the kingdom, “on pain to suffer death, if they abide, and be apprehended and taken.” The fires of Smithfield and the inquisition of the Protestants could not crush this movement destined of God, at a later date, to change the world. Considered an obnoxious sect in the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, they carried on their meetings secretly. They were an industrious class of skilled mechanics and introduced into England that which afterward gave that nation its commercial and manufacturing supremacy. The English passed a law that each foreign workman should take and train one English apprentice. As a result, fifty thousand English lads were trained, not only mechanically, but also in the principles of these Dutch Anabaptists. This spiritual training led to the Puritan revolution in England and to the greater movement across the seas. Each of these Dutch Baptist churches was a republic in itself, independent with its popularly elected officers, deacons, and elders. They held, as a cardinal doctrine, the separation of Church and State. From the sections in which these Dutch Anabaptists lived came fully fifty per cent of the early colonists to the New World. Fourteen English towns, in which they formed a large proportion of the population, are duplicated by New England towns of the same name. From the same district Cromwell recruited his invincible Ironsides. Back of all that was good and noble in the settlements at Plymouth and Boston and in Connecticut was the