USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > Bethlehem > A history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741-1892, with some account of its founders and their early activity in America > Part 4
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
populated. More than thirty-six thousand families went into exile. The success of this insane and barbarous crusade smothered, even if it could not extinguish, evangelical religion in Bohemia and Moravia. The organized existence of the Brethren's Church in those countries was at an end and the Anti-Reformer was satisfied. Other evangelical parties had their strongholds in other lands. Viewed as organizations, they were merely driven out of the country and back home. The Brethren's Church was crushed in its own home where it originated and developed as an element of the nationality. It was an exile and a stranger in other countries and had no home in the day of affliction. This difference explains the cruel ignoring of the Brethren by other evangelical parties in the terms they made in the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty-years' War in 1648. Their Church was looked upon as a practically extinct Church which the Protestant powers did not feel moved to consider in the hour of triumph. No princes represented it, and considerations of state policy weighed more than the law of Christ.
Disruption and dispersion did not, however, mean extinction. Large numbers who remained in the home lands of the Church con- tinued to cherish its faith and traditions and to meet in secret, par- ticularly in Moravia, where there seemed to be more opportunity to do so, and these came to be called "the hidden seed" of the Church. Those who went into exile found their way in part to the Polish congregations of the Church. Others rallied and held together so far as possible in other regions. The chief center of the Brethren was now Lissa in Poland. This place was sacked and burned in 1656. Then many who had gathered there joined the smaller groups dis- persed in other parts of Poland, or in Silesia and Hungary, while numbers of them followed former refugees to Holland and England. The bishops continued to exercise oversight and provide pastoral care as far as possible, through visits and correspondence, and to secure material help for their destitute people from sympathizing friends ; synods and conferences were held from time to time, adopt- ing such measures as the circumstances permitted to strengthen the things that remained; the constitution and order of the Church em- bodied in the Ratio Disciplinae and printed in 1633, as already stated, were treasured in the hope of restoration; the episcopal succession was carefully preserved to be a living link across the period of dis- ruption representing the historic identity of the Church. Several centers of administration were temporarily established at points
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THE MORAVIAN CHURCH TO 1735.
where the Brethren were permitted to congregate as a distinct body, and even Lissa once more became such a seat for a while; but the prevailing conditions during the last three decades of the century ren- dered irresistible the gradual absorption of the scattered remnants by other bodies, mainly the Reformed Church of the realm, of which ultimately even the men in whose persons the episcopate of the Unitas Fratrum was perpetuated were legally recognized ministers. The native language of the exiles was maintained in public services at some places until 1700, when it was entirely displaced by German. Up to 1715 about fifteen parishes seem to have remained and when the actual resuscitation of the Church took place in the following decade in Saxony, these did not enter into organic connection with it. What survives to recall their existence is to be found in a group of so-called Unitätsgemeinden in the Province of Posen, whose episco- pate, preserved unbroken until 1841, was in 1844 and again in 1858 and 1883 restored by bishops of the Moravian Church.
During the period from the end of the Thirty-years' War until well into the second decade of the eighteenth century the representatives of the suppressed Church maintained frequent and cordial com- munication with the Church of England and particularly with the University authorities at Oxford where considerable sums of money were raised for the impoverished Brethren, scholarships were founded for their students, degrees were conferred upon certain of their bishops, plans of ecclesiastical union were discussed, and arrange- ments existed for the pastoral care of Bohemian and Moravian families who had fled to that country.
During the period from the beginning of the Counter-Reformation until far beyond the middle of the seventeenth century, one dis- tinguished man stands pre-eminently associated with the hard for- tunes of the Brethren and with the effort to prevent the extinction of their Church. This man was John Amos Comenius, the last of the old Bohemian-Moravian line of its bishops, consecrated to the episcopacy as an exile, but when the hope of a speedy restoration of the Church in its native land was yet cherished. Ever mourning for the prostrate palaces of Zion and for his bleeding country, he has been called "the Jeremiah of the Brethren's Church." He is far better known to the world in other spheres in which he is given rank as one of the greatest men of his age. In Sweden, Holland and England his fame as a philosopher, and particularly as a reformer of educational principles and methods, was spread abroad and his
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
presence was coveted in all of these countries. Even from across the ocean he received an invitation to come to America and assume the presidency of Harvard College, and the learned Cotton Mather refers regretfully to the fact that the attempt failed and "that incomparable Moravian became not an American." When in 1892 the three hundredth anniversary of his birth was celebrated by so many educa- tional institutions and learned societies in Europe and America, and the great service he rendered the world as a pioneer of modern pedagogic science was extolled, few gave a thought to what he did as a Moravian Bishop to preserve the Church of his fathers from oblivion. In Holland, where he ended his days, and in England, in the midst of ceaseless literary toil, harassed in mind and heart by the bewildering unrest and buffeting tumults of the times, his tongue and pen were ever pleading the interests of his exiled brethren and of other fugitives in distress, such as the Waldenses, so often confused in history with the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. The Amer- ican colonies were inviting people like these, and especially was the Dutch West India Company, of which a wealthy literary patron of Comenius at Amsterdam seems to have been a member, offering them inducements. Reference in old documents of this corporation to the desirability of having Bohemian exiles and Waldenses as settlers on the Delaware River suggests association with the plans of Comenius to find places of refuge for his homeless countrymen. Some such did come to the Dutch settlements on the Delaware in that "pre-pennian" period, but whether any of them belonged to the "hidden seed" or the migrating membership of the Brethren's Church has not been ascertained. There is strong reason also to believe that Comenius met the first Quakers who appeared in Holland and who there instituted those connections with the oppressed and unsettled masses which later led to further extensive emigrations to the new world. More than half a century, however, elapsed after his death in Holland in 1671, before the first men who represented not only his national, but also his ecclesiastical connections, are positively known to have come to Pennsylvania; and they did not come as straggling fugitives, but as messengers sent from a new church home to seek, not a refuge from bloody persecution, but a field of Christian activity.
Fifty years after the death of the aged Bishop his hope was fufilled in events as insignificant in appearance, as were those original movements of the Brethren at Kunwald in 1457. Not from Poland,
FS/92
NICHOLAS LOUIS, COUNT OF ZINZENDORF
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THE MORAVIAN CHURCH TO 1735.
where the Church had longest maintained some visible cohesion and organization, and not through efforts instituted by its two bishops yet living, but from the posterity of that "hidden seed" of Moravia, where the smouldering embers of evangelical faith were here and there being quickened into flame and the old recollections and hopes were being revived, the movement proceeded which resulted in the re- newal of the Brethren's Church in another country, modified and adapted to other conditions.
Christian David, a Moravian carpenter, converted from Romanism and evangelizing among his countrymen, became the conspicuous agent in this movement. Seeking a refuge for some spiritually awakened families who wished to emigrate to a Protestant country, as so many others had done at intervals, he came into contact, early in 1722, with a young Saxon nobleman, Nicholas Lewis, Count of Zinzendorf, who was attracting much attention by his singular devotion to religious work. Moved by the account given him of these people, he promised to help them find a location, little antici- pating the far-reaching result.
Near the home of his childhood, Gross Hennersdorf, in Upper Lusatia, Saxony, he had acquired an estate called Berthelsdorf, on which he was preparing to take up his residence and establish one of several centres of Christian activity, which he had been planning in conjunction with a few friends of his youth and godly associates, somewhat after the manner of the old Pietistic societies, and of the institutions of Halle. There had been no thought of including the care of Moravian refugees in these plans, and co-operation in recon- structing the ancient evangelical Church of that country did not enter his mind. Nevertheless the Divine purpose yet hidden from him brought him by means of this interview with the carpenter of Moravia into contact with what he was ultimately compelled to recog- nize as his pre-eminent lifework-"eine mir von Ewigkeit bestimmte Parochie," he subsequently called it. That he was himself a descend- ant of one who for the sake of evangelical liberty had, like so many Bohemian and Moravian nobles, abandoned his ancestral seat south of Moravia, where the same ecclesiastical oppression reigned; and that his bride, the. Countess Erdmuth Dorothea of Reuss, whom he wedded some months after this interview and who entered devotedly into his work, traced lineage back to the family of Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, the first lordly patron of the Brethren more than two and a half centuries before, are incidental facts-he alluded to them
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
years afterwards-which add even a romantic aspect to the destiny that linked their fortunes to those of the Moravian Church.
Some weeks after Zinzendorf made this promise two brothers, Augustine and Jacob Neisser, of Sehlen, Moravia, with their house- holds, ten persons in all, who had quietly left their homes at night, suddenly arrived in Upper Lusatia under Christian David's leadership and after securing reluctant permission to locate-Zinzendorf being in Dresden at the time-they commenced, on June 17, 1722, to fell timber for a house at a site selected by the Count's steward on the Berthelsdorf manor. Out of this beginning arose the village of Herrnhut, so intimately associated with the history of the Church. Many followed them from Moravia in the course of the next few years, some of them men of position and substance who sacrificed property and comfort for religion's sake. Others came from Bohemia and finally unsettled and seeking souls from various German neigh- borhoods began to join the colony, so that representatives of the sev- eral Protestant confessions, individuals who had forsaken Romish connection, enthusiasts and separatists with various special tenets en- tered into the population and took advantage of the generous indul- gence and the comprehensive but as yet immature plans of the young lord of the manor, to assert themselves rather aggressively. When the corner-stone of the building in which the first of the proposed establishments in pursuance of the Count's projects was to be opened, and which became the first place of worship, was laid on May 12, 1724, five Moravians who more distinctly represented traditions and family associations of the Brethren's Church and had a more definite purpose in view in connection with the thought of its possible reor- ganization than previous refugees, arrived at Herrnhut. Zinzendorf later called them by way of pre-eminence "the five Moravian Church- men." Three of them bore the name David Nitschmann. The other two were John Toeltschig and Melchior Zeisberger.
It was after his interview with these men that Zinzendorf began to recognize a problem in the desire of the Moravians. Grave questions were involved in the further reception of refugees from those neigh- borhoods, for drastic measures in the spirit of the old persecution were being adopted to check the movement, but were rather increasing it. To permit them to organize on the basis of church principles and regulations which were associated with another nationality; which no longer had official recognition anywhere beyond the fact that they were personally represented by two ecclesiastics who were perpetuat-
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THE MORAVIAN CHURCH TO 1735.
ing the episcopate of the old Church while laboring under the author- ity of the Reformed Church of Prussia and Poland; which further- more were historically quite distinct from those of the established Church of Saxony, which was Lutheran, would produce very serious complications. Personally Zinzendorf was a Lutheran, not only nom- inally but by decided preference, while those of the Moravians whose theological conceptions-somewhat undefined at the time-revealed any bias on the points of difference, seemed to lean rather towards the Reformed standards. Others who found their way to Herrnhut disclaimed adhesion to either of the leading confessions, and con- fused the situation the more by obtruding sectarian or separatistic specialties. In the consideration of this problem, with his disposition to combine rather than differentiate divergent elements, to seek a principle and method of holding different persuasions to the central points of agreement, with a safe measure of liberty in points of divergence so long as nothing essential was compromised, the rudi- ments of a scheme began to take form in his mind which in subse- quent years he sought to develop systematically ; viz., that of accom- modating the several confessional affiliations and church cults under a plan which would admit of their being conserved and allowed to predominate in certain main elements according to the traditions of different localities or bodies of people brought into the general connection, while all constituted one household of brethren bound by those articles of doctrine, constitution, discipline and ritual which were central and accepted by all. This scheme eventually found shape in what he called Tropi Paedias, resting on conceptions which the prevailing spirit of his age could not appreciate or sympathize with, but which would command more intelligent respect at the present time. These conceptions entered into his plans and methods to such an extent that herein the key must be sought to interpret much that has been misapprehended as confused and inconsistent in his efforts among rigid confessionists of different schools and among all manner of sectarians. They must be kept in mind in order to intelligently follow his course among the variety of religionists in Pennsylvania some years later. They even account for some char- acteristics of the modern Moravian Church in its doctrinal position, its polity, discipline and ritual, and its attitude towards other religious bodies; for rudiments in all of these particulars lay in this scheme as well as in the ancient system of the Church, while others are to be found in the process of adaptation to its peculiar situation within
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA
the pale of a state church with a doctrinal confession and other requirements established by law.
Various considerations directed Zinzendorf's efforts to regulate the crude situation at Herrnhut. Paramount was the spiritual good of the individuals and essential to this was agreement to simple evangelical fundamentals in theory and practice to overcome both sectarian vagaries and confessional disputations. Then also the civil and ecclesiastical limitations had to be regarded in the work of foun- dation-laying, and a proper understanding of their relations to him as lord of the manor and to his parish minister at Berthelsdorf had to be established among the people, while dissension and dissatisfaction threatened the dissolution of the colony.
The occurrences of the year 1727 constituted an epoch. After much earnest, personal work, in which he was aided by a few of the most steadfast and godly men, the Count succeeded in bringing about harmony of spirit and agreement to principles in so far that on May 12 of that year unanimous written assent was given to a body of articles called "Statuta Fraterna, or Brotherly Agreement of the Brethren from Bohemia and Moravia and sundry other Brethren at Herrnhut to walk according to Apostolic Rule."
Twelve elders were chosen to have spiritual oversight and four of these were selected by lot as chief elders. A variety of other offices completed this first organization which in the main was notably simi- lar to that originally formed in 1457. A season of deep spiritual experience and fervent concord ensued, and at the first celebration of the Holy Communion after all this, in the parish church of Ber- thelsdorf on August 13 of that year, such an overpowering sense of the Divine presence sealed the whole that the day came to be spoken of as "the spiritual birthday of the Renewed Church." A strong impulse to evangelistic activity was awakened, the influence of which soon began to be felt in many neighborhoods. The itinerants were warmly encouraged by many pastors of the State Church, some the- ological professors and some pious noblemen, while nearly every- where the common people heard them gladly.
But strong currents set in against Herrnhut from various quarters. The visits of the zealous Moravians to their native villages and other places where like conditions prevailed provoked more violent measures to suppress their activity. In 1729 two of the Nitschmanns -one of those "five churchmen" and one of the Herrnhut elders- who were on such a tour, died in prison. In Germany certain of the
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THE MORAVIAN CHURCH TO 1735.
unfriendly class among the Protestant clergy who long before Herrn- hut was founded had been making Zinzendorf a target for censorious flings and were predisposed to find fault on general principles with anything he might say or do, opened a campaign of detraction from the pulpit, from the cathedra and through the press, which met the approval of some officials at the court of Dresden, and notwith- standing the failure of a royal commission in 1732 to find anything amiss in the new settlement, secured the banishment of the Count from Saxony four years later. Unfortunate tendencies which de- veloped at a subsequent period of the Church and gave some real occasion for censure will be referred to in another chapter.
The beginning of these hostile agitations made the question how to dispose of the wishes of the Moravians quite perplexing. Their zeal and fearlessness as evangelists increased Zinzendorf's regard for them and his desire to utilize their services in pursuing his ever broadening plans of activity. Already in 1727 while pondering the thought of undertaking missionary work among the heathen which had been in his mind from his boyhood, the idea was broached of founding a settlement in Pennsylvania to which the Moravians might emigrate if not permitted to remain in Saxony, and from which they might go out into the wilderness and preach the gospel to the Indians.
In the Summer of that same memorable year, 1727, a book never yet examined by the Count came into his hands which moved him profoundly and had a distinct influence on his plans in reference to these people. It was the old Ratio Disciplinae of the Brethren re- vised and republished by Comenius in 1660, with a succinct history of his much-loved Church, then completely overthrown, and dedicated in sad and tender language to the Church of England, along with a lengthy exhortation to that Church-Paraenesis Ecclesiae Bohemicae ad Anglicanam de Bono Unitatis et Ordinis-in which he fondly sets forth and commends features which he deems of universal value in the ecclesiastical traditions of the Brethren. The impression this work made upon Zinzendorf can best be stated in the words of a letter which he wrote eleven years later. He says: "I could not long read the pitiful lamentation of the aged Comenius, when he thought that the Church of the Brethren had come to an end and he was locking its door; I could not look the second time at his sorrowful prayer, turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned, renew our days as of old, before the resolution was formed-I shall help
4
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
to do this so far as lies in my power, even if my estate, my honor and my life are sacrificed, and thus as long as I live, and, so far as I can provide for it, after my death, this little congregation of the Lord shall be preserved for Him until He comes."
The following year, 1728, two of those "five Moravian Churchmen," the eldest of the three David Nitschmanns, subsequently the Bishop, and John Toeltschig, together with another Moravian, Wenzel Neisser, were sent to England to give desired information about Herrnhut. Their visit opened the way to a series of steps which led to the estab- lishment of the Brethren's Church in that country also, and were of importance to subsequent undertakings in America. In like manner Zinzendorf gradually instituted far-reaching connections with princes, civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries and faculties of seats of learning in various other quarters through personal visits and correspondence and through such deputations as that to England. Thus a degree of attention was attracted to the new enterprise in high circles as well as among the masses which would not have been awakened without a leader so conspicuous in rank and position, of such versatile genius and impressive personality, so ardent and enthusiastic in the pursuit of his objects. The leading Moravians and several other men who had cast in their lot with them were moreover men of strong character, of uncommon natural ability and of dauntless spirit. These qualities on the part of the deputies from Herrnhut, together with the inter- esting traditions and aspirations which they represented, also did much to bring the place to the notice of men both great and lowly to an extent which would not have been the case if its people, with all their fervent piety, had been of quiescent and pliable character, disposed to simply settle down as an element of the Lutheran parish of Berthelsdorf, and nothing more, enjoying the privileges this gave them.
After Zinzendorf's first determination to do what he could to further the attainment of their wishes-even interfering in their behalf, supported by an encouraging message from one hundred and two masters and students at Jena, when, in his absence, a strong effort was made to induce them to abandon their purpose and become simply a Lutheran congregation-he, himself, counting all the possible costs of further steps in the face of the growing opposition, once more strongly presented to them the favorable arguments on this side, and the hazards to themselves and to the cause of evangelical peace which might be incurred in the further pursuit of their purpose.
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THE MORAVIAN CHURCH TO 1735.
They remained firm however and declared that if the introduction of their ancient system and the establishment of a distinct Church of the Brethren was not possible at Herrnhut, they would turn their footsteps elsewhere to seek another location. They were willing to assent to the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession, in which they had been instructed by Pastor Rothe of Berthelsdorf, and by the Count himself, for they had no reason or desire to be schismatics doctrinally, but the church-order of their fathers they insisted on hav- ing, so far as this was feasible.3 This point was settled at a general
3 This position - cardinal in the later structure of the Church and its adjustment to the German and English State Churches, and accounting for some features of its early attempts in Pennsylvania, much obscured and distorted by writers following misleading sources or biased in their own attitude - had been taken already in 1729 in a so-called Notariats Instrument, executed with the signatures of eighty-three men of Herrnhut before the proper civil officer, as the basis of regulations at that time, and became more articulate after 1731. It was simply conformity in doctrinal statement and singularity in church-order. No attempt was ever made to introduce a former doctrinal confession of the Brethren or a new one, for either effort would have been as futile as undesirable. The dominant Augsburg Confession was accepted and acknowledged as setting forth the fundamental doctrines held. In church- order a distinct system was built on the old Moravian foundation with the old Moravian episcopal ordination inherited. On this ground the Church acquired officially recognized and guaranteed standing in Saxony and in Prussian territory in spite of persistent efforts in hostile quarters to discredit both its confessional avowal and its historic descent. Its ulti- mate status was not that of a mere tolerated sect or a mere society within Lutheran lines, but that of an adopted and ingrafted distinct Church with its own constituted authorities, independent of all other ecclesiastical obligation or supervision, and its formal adhesion to that original, common Protestant confession of the realm and compliance with civil require- ment, being the only condition of its franchises.
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