and the North, and secondly in the rapidly growing division between the
friends of the Union, and the treasonable 'Copperheads,' who consist of
men of selfish, aristocratic tendencies, and their natural allies, the
refuse of the population.

It is very unfortunate that the term 'Anabaptists' should have ever been
applied to the ferocious fanatics led by John of Leyden, Knipperdolling,
and Rothmann, since it has brought discredit on a large sect bearing the
same name with which it had in reality even less in common than the
historians of the latter imagine. It is not a difficult matter for the
mind familiar with the undoubted Oriental origin of the 'heresies' of
the middle ages, to trace in the origin at least of the fierce and
licentious socialists of Muenster the same secret influence which,
flowing from Gnostic, Manichaean, or Templar sources, founded the
Waldense and Albigense sects, and was afterward perceptible in a branch
of the Hussites. At the time of the Reformation their ancient doctrines
had subsided into Biblical fanaticism; but the old leaven of revolt
against the church, and against all compulsion--keenly sharpened by
their experiences, in the recent Peasant's War--was as hot as ever among
them. They had no great or high philosophy, but were in all respects
chaotic, contradictory, and stormy. Unable to rise to the cultivated and
philanthropic feelings which accompanied the skepticism of their remote
founders, they based their denial of moral accountability--as narrow and
vulgar minds naturally do--on a predestination, which is as insulting to
GOD as to man, since it is consistently comprehensible only by supposing
HIM a slave to destiny. Among such vassals to a worse than earthly
tyranny, the man who as 'a Scottish servant regarded not his own life or
that of any other save his master,' would find doctrines congenial
enough to his grovelling nature. So he was willing to believe that 'that
which was written of me a million years before I saw the light must be
executed by me.' 'I am well taught, and strong in belief,' he says,
'that man does nought for himself; he is but the foam on the billow,
which rises, bubbles, and bursts, not by its own effort, but by the
mightier impulse of fate which urges him.' And the combination of his
two wretched doctrines is well set forth in the passage wherein he tells
his mistress that she had no choice as regarded accepting his criminal
services. 'You might not choose, lady,