Bloedigh Toneel der Doops Gesinde en Wereloose Christenen,” a folio of thirteen hundred and twenty-nine pages. It was reproduced in 1685 in two magnificent folio volumes, handsomely illustrated with a frontispiece, and a hundred and four copper-plates engraved by the celebrated Jan Luyken.
This book in its immense proportions is thus seen to have been a gradual culmination of the research and literary labors of many authors. In his first edition Van Braght gives a list of 356 books he had consulted. It is the great historical work of the Mennonites, and the most durable monument of that sect. It traces the history of those Christians who from the time of the Apostles were opposed to the baptism of infants and to warfare, including the Lyonists, Petrobusians, and Waldenses; details the persecutions of the Mennonites by the Spaniards in the Netherlands and the Calvinists in Switzerland, together with the individual sufferings of many hundreds who were burned, drowned, beheaded, or otherwise maltreated; and contains the confessions of faith adopted by the different communities. The relations between the Quakers, who arose much later, and the Mennonites were close and intimate; their views upon most points of belief and church government were identical, and where they met they welded together naturally and without a flaw. Penn, along with others of the early Quakers, went to Holland and Germany, to preach to, and make converts among the Mennonites, and he invited them pressingly to settle in his province. In 1683, and within the next few years, many families from the Lower Rhine and the Netherlands went to Germantown in Pennsylvania, branching from there out to Skippack; and in 1709, began the extensive emigration from Switzerland and the Palatinate to Lancaster County, where are still to be found the largest
