ther religious
body, of which there were quite a number of members in Holland: the
Mennonites. This sect was founded by Menno Simons, a Frieslander,
contemporary of Luther; only this man swung on further from Catholicism
than Luther and declared that a paid priesthood was what made all the
trouble. Religion to him was a matter of individual inspiration. When an
institution was formed, built on man's sense of relation with his Maker,
property purchased, and paid priests employed, instantly there was a
pollution of the well of life. It became a money-making scheme, and a
grand clutch for place and power followed: it really ceased to be
religion at all, so long as we define religion in its spiritual sense.
"A priest," said Menno, "is a man who thrives on the sacred relations
that exist between man and God, and is little better than a person who
would live on the love-emotions of men and women."

This certainly was bold language, but to be exact, it was persecution
that forced the expression. The Catholics had placed an interdict on all
services held by Protestant pastors, and the deprivation proved to Menno
that paid preaching and costly churches and trappings were really not
necessary at all. Man could go to God without them, and pray in secret.
Spirituality is not dependent on either church or priest.

The Mennonites in Holland escaped theological criticism by disclaiming
to be a church, and calling their institution a college, and themselves
"Collegiants."

All the Mennonites asked was to be let alone. They were plain,
unpretentious people, who worked hard, lived frugally, refused to make
oaths, to accept civil office, or to go to war. They are a variant of
the impulse that makes Quakers and all those peculiar people known as
Primitive Christians, who mark the swinging of the pendulum from pride
and pretense to simplicity and a life of modest usefulness.

The sincerity, truthfulness and virtue of the Mennonites so impressed
itself upon even the ruthless Corsican, that he made them exempt from
conscription.

Before Spinoza was twenty, he had come into acquaintanceship with these
plain people. His relationship with the rabbis and learned men of Israel
had given him a culture that the Mennonites did not possess; but these
plain people, by the earnestness of their lives, showed him that the
science of theology was not a science at all. Nobody understands
theology: it is not meant to be understood--it is for belief. Spi