MENNO SIMMONS, Sylvester Hassell Menno Simmons (1496-1561) was no doubt the most useful Baptist minister of the sixteenth century. While a Catholic priest, he saw an Anabaptist beheaded, and was led to inquire into the scriptural authority of infant baptism; and not being enabled by his Catholic superior or by Luther or Bucer or Bullinger to find such authority anywhere in the Bible, he was conscientiously led, at great worldly sacrifice, to renounce the custom, and to join the despised Anabaptists (in 1536). For twenty-five years he traveled in the Netherlands and Germany, with his wife and children, amid perpetual sufferings and daily perils of his life, and proclaimed God’s full and free salvation to all believing sinners, and he founded numerous churches.
He seemed, says Mosheim, to be “the common Bishop of all the Anabaptists.” He earnestly warned his brethren against the Munster abominations; and he insisted upon strict discipline in all the churches, which were independent of each other in church government, and united only by a bond of love. Some practiced feet-washing, and some did not. The members of his churches were called Mennonites, and were plain, honest, industrious people, mostly farmers. (Hassell’s History ppg 504, 505)