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 5
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The favorable findings of the Royal Saxon Commission of 1732 and of two others in 1736 and 1737, notwithstanding the harsh measures of 1736 against Zinzendorf personally, issued in an edict August 7, 1737, conceding for the time being the position taken by the Brethren, " so long as they continued in the doctrine of the unaltered confession of Augsburg." Twelve years later, after another commission, their definite recognition as such adherents and the conclusive establishment by the State of their position of conformity in doctrinal statement and singularity in church-order took place in the publication of a royal mandate of September 20, 1749, which decreed that " the Protestant Moravian Brethren, avowing the unaltered Augsburg Confession should be received in all Saxony." The original Prussian concession on the same basis was dated December 25, 1742. It was confirmed in 1746, 1763 and 1789. The validity of these old concessions under greatly changed conditions was once more tested and settled on the old basis September 26, 1898, by Supreme Court decision in Prussia.
In England the inadequacy of an act of Parliament of 1747 to protect Moravian settlements and missions in English territory, and misrepresentation of the results of the Saxon Commission of 1749 led to a request for a similar thorough investigation of the Church; the Augustana being again presented as its doctrinal basis and its independent
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
meeting on January 7, 1731, when, after a full discussion of the ques- tion, it was permitted to turn on the drawing of selected texts of Scripture, one to be taken favorably, the other adversely. That which was to decide for the wishes of the Moravians was drawn: II. Thess. 2:15-"Brethren stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught."
Several months after this decision, which settled the question whether those Moravians would cling together with others at Herrn- hut under Zinzendorf's leadership and laid the general lines on which further ecclesiastical organization and development of activities should proceed, the attendance of the Count at the coronation of the King of Denmark brought them into initial touch with what was to be their pre-eminent sphere of labor and was to bring the first of them across the ocean to America-evangelization in foreign parts, the propagation of the gospel among the heathen-an undertaking which had appealed to the hearts of some in that notable year 1727; which had been the dream of Zinzendorf's boyhood; which had en- tered into the great philanthropic plans of Comenius in the previous century and which Luther, two hundred years before, had intimated to the harassed and unsettled Brethren in Bohemia and Moravia they might as suitable men take up as their mission.
In Copenhagen Zinzendorf and one of those "five churchmen" of 1724 who accompanied him, one of the three David Nitschmanns, heard a negro servant from the Island of St. Thomas describe the pitiful state of the slaves there. The impression they received from this tale of woe was shared by all the people of Herrnhut when the negro was later permitted to visit the place and tell his story. Through this incident the open door they had been waiting for was set before them and on August 21, 1732, Leonhard Dober and this same David Nitschmann set out from Herrnhut for St. Thomas to begin the first Moravian mission to the heathen. Again by way of Denmark came the second opening and January 19, 1733, Matthew Stach, Christian
church-order on the old Moravian foundation with its old episcopate submitted for exami- nation. The result was the act of Parliament, May 12, 1749, which gave it recognition, with distinct privileges in all British dominions, as "an ancient Protestant Episcopal Church," and declared "their doctrine to differ in no essential article of faith from that of the Church of England, as set forth in the Thirty-Nine Articles." This doctrinal position does not place the Moravian Church in any kind of organic connection with the Lutheran Church. The general statements of that old confession are accepted not because they are Lutheran but because they are Scriptural.
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THE MORAVIAN CHURCH TO 1735.
Stach and the veteran evangelist Christian David started for Green- land. November 12, 1733, fourteen men and four women sailed from Stettin and after a voyage of extraordinary hardship and duration reached the Island of St. Croix to found a missionary colony. Feb- ruary 24, 1734, Andrew Grassmann, Daniel Schneider and John Nitschmann left for Lapland and at the same time Frederick Boeh- nisch and John Beck set out for Greenland to reinforce that work. November 21, 1734, the first colony destined for missionary work among the North American Indians started for Georgia. During that year plans were also formed to begin work among the negro slaves in the Dutch possessions in South America, and the next year George Piesch, George Berwig and Christian von Larisch went to Surinam to examine the situation and prospects.
Now the need of supervision and of ordained men in these fields had to be considered. Arrangements which had existed since 1727 might have sufficed yet longer for the six hundred people of Herrn- hut and their itinerant work in Germany and neighboring states, but the destiny now opening before the Brethren, with prospective activ- ity in many and distant lands, made clear the necessity of the next important step in the course of things. Their messengers in this wider field must represent, not an incomplete make-shift of organiza- tion or a mere society, but the historic Church which was there being resuscitated not only in spirit but also in a definite form and in full function. They must go forth with the ordination of its bishops, representing its rightful place and character as a branch of the Church of God, invested with its authority, so that all they do may be done decently and in order, and have validity in the eyes of men. This further element of legitimacy to constitute the men of Herrnhut fully the representatives of the ancient Brethren's Church of Bohemia and Moravia-its episcopate, was waiting in the hands of its two bishops yet surviving. They were Daniel Ernst Jablonsky, D.D., Court Preacher to the King of Prussia, Counselor of the Consistory of the realm and President of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Ber- lin; and Christian Sitkovius, Superintendent of the United Churches of Poland at Lissa. Dr. Jablonsky, who was a grandson of the illus- trious Comenius, had, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, taken a conspicuous part in the evangelical union efforts instituted by the King of Prussia, with the Sendomir union of 1570 between the Brethren, the Lutherans and the Reformed as a historic prece- dent and his own status as a bishop of the Brethren's Church, then
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
without organized form, laboring under Reformed Church auspices, and that of his episcopal colleague Sitkovius, superintending the con- gregations in which the last Polish parishes of the Brethren had been merged into those of the established Reformed Church, constituting a natural standpoint from which to make such efforts. He had under the King's commission conducted the negotiations with the Anglican Church for the establishment of an alliance in which the episcopate of the Unitas Fratrum, representing historic relations to the several parties, might be used to establish an episcopal government with which that of England would fraternize and under which the two Protestant bodies of Prussia might unite. Nothing came of this, but now he was destined to use the historic trust he held in another way. He rejoiced to hear of what had taken place at Herrnhut and of what the men from Moravia were striving to accomplish, and he, as well as his aged colleague Sitkovius, were at once ready, when the proper occasion came, to transfer the ancient episcopate to the new organi- zation. So it came to pass that David Nitschmann, one of the "five Moravian churchmen" referred to above, one of the first elders at Herrnhut, one of the first deputies to England and one of the first two missionaries to the heathen, having returned from St. Thomas, was chosen as the best qualified and most worthy man among the Moravians and sent to Berlin where, after due examination, Bishop Jablonsky, with the written concurrence of Bishop Sitkovius, who was unable to attend in person, consecrated him a Bishop of the Brethren's Church on March 13, 1735. They subsequently furnished him with a certificate of consecration, conferring authority upon him to ordain presbyters and deacons after the manner of the Brethren, to make episcopal visits and to perform all of the functions which belong to the office of a bishop. With this added to what had gone before, the resuscitated Church was fully equipped to go forward with its evangelistic work.
This is the Church to which the first inhabitants of Bethlehem be- longed and this, its first bishop after its renewal and the first who crossed the Atlantic Ocean and performed episcopal acts in the American colonies, was the official founder of Bethlehem, a place remarkable in the fact that for the space of one hundred years its municipal and ecclesiastical government were identical, the town and the congregation being one.
DAVID NITSCHMANN (EPISC.)
CHAPTER III.
FROM HERRNHUT TO THE FORKS OF THE DELAWARE, 1735-1740.
As the hopes of Comenius and his brethren were fulfilled in an unexpected manner half a century after his death in the founding of Herrnhut, where their Church was revived, so its first permanent settlement in Pennsylvania came to pass in a manner quite as unex- pected almost a century after the Dutch West India Company first drew the attention of the exiles in Holland and elsewhere to the shores of the Delaware River.
When in 1727 the people of Herrnhut began to think of sending men to America, the land of Penn, with its broad and liberal charter, to which so many thousands of Germans had emigrated, was the particular region they had in mind. They saw in imagination the hordes of savages roaming through its forests and the multitudes of home-seekers settling there, for the most part without preacher or teacher, and large opportunities for evangelistic activity rose before their vision. The uncertainty of their situation in Saxony led them also to consider that Protestant intolerance added to Papal intoler- ance might compel them to cross the ocean to find liberty and peace, and that such a settlement in Pennsylvania might then be not only a center of missionary operations but also a refuge for people leav- ing Bohemia and Moravia to seek freedom of conscience.
The attention given to missions in other regions delayed the under- taking, and through unforeseen occurrences the founders of the first permanent Moravian settlement in North America were led from Herrnhut to their final destination by an indirect course, and after preliminary efforts elsewhere which had not been contemplated originally in the American plans.
A colony of Schwenkfeldian exiles from Silesia sojourning under Count Zinzendorf's protection on the Berthelsdorf manor from 1725 were required by a royal edict of 1733 to leave Saxony. The first company of them came to Pennsylvania a few months later. The
3I
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
second and larger colony left Herrnhut April 26, 1734, with the in- tention of locating on a tract of land secured for them by the Count in the new Province of Georgia created the previous year. When they reached Holland they were persuaded to follow the others to Pennsylvania. They had been furnished by Zinzendorf with three special conductors : George Boehnisch, one of the Moravian Breth- ren; Christopher Baus, a Hungarian of Goerlitz, who had joined the Brethren, and Christopher Wiegner, a Silesian co-religionist of the exiles who, like several others, had entered into close fellowship with the people of Herrnhut.
They embarked at Rotterdam on the chartered ship St. Andrew, Captain John Stedman, and landed at Philadelphia September 22, 1734. This is therefore the date on which the first Moravian from Herrnhut arrived in Pennsylvania. Boehnisch remained until the Autumn of 1737, when he returned to Europe. During this sojourn of three years, while helping Wiegner to open his farm in the Skip- pack woods and to build his house in which later so many Moravians found hospitality on their journeys, he did what he could as a lay- evangelist among adults and children on the spiritually destitute fron- tier, and especially co-operated in bringing to pass the first meetings at Wiegner's of a circle of earnest men of various creeds and per- suasions to seek mutual edification and to take counsel together for the propagation of piety and fellowship regardless of sectarian lines, out of which arose the undenominational union known as "The Asso- ciated Brethren of Skippack." Henry Antes, one of the most influ- ential, respected and godly Germans of Pennsylvania, whose home- stead and mill in Frederick Township figured conspicuously in that region and who became so prominently identified with Moravian work in Pennsylvania, was the leading spirit in this modest Evangeli- cal Alliance which resulted from his contact with the first Moravian who came to the Province.1
I Others besides Christopher Wiegner were Henry Frey, John Kogen, George Merkel, Christian Weber, John Bonn, Jacob Wenz, Jost Schmidt, William Bosse, Jost Becker of Skippack; William Frey, George Stiefel, Henry Holstein, Andrew Frey of Fredericktown ; Matthias Gmelen, Abraham Wagner of Matetsche; John Bartelot, Francis Ritter, William Pott of Oley; John Bechtel, John Adam Gruber, Blasius Mackinet. George Benzel of Ger- mantown. A central committee consisting of Antes, Bechtel, Stiefel and Wiegner met every four weeks for exchange of reports and consultation. They were joined by Spangen- berg-of whom more anon-when he came to Pennsylvania. In 1738 they instituted a regular Sunday meeting at Wiegner's, where for a while his family, Boehnisch, Baus, the third conductor of the Schwenkfelders who also had his home there until 1742, and Span-
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PIONEER MOVEMENTS TO 1740.
Georgia@de America do hereby Certify that the des NºL in the Second Tything of the Upper New Ward in the Town of Sabahnah, with the Lens thereunto appertaining, vir, a Gardendes containing about 5 Acres, and a Form of containing Forty five acres of an? + 1735 was in the year 1785 Granted to the Rw. mi Augustine Spangenberg ; Number 9. in the afore de Words Tything with its Garden and Farm Lets, like ast Nº 4 afores: to David Nitchman, And a Tract of 500 Acres of Sand lying on or near the River Oquechees to the hon Lewis Coun Linindory
In Witness where of I have hersanto. Set my Hand and Seal, Dated of Javannak this 1b. Day of April 1746.
Jest John Pye Record of Savannah
Register of World
CERTIFICATE OF OWNERSHIP OF LOTS IN GEORGIA.
4
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
When the Trustees of Georgia heard that the Schwenkfeldian emi- grants had turned their course to Pennsylvania, they proposed that a Moravian colony be sent to the new province. The suggestion was adopted because it opened a prospect for undertaking missionary work among the Indians. Twenty men volunteered to go and on November 27, 1734, nine of them set out for England.2 After a tedious and very trying journey they reached London, January 15, 1735. There they were met by the man who was to be their leader to Georgia and had preceded them to England to consult with the Trustees and make preparations for the voyage. This man, who will be mentioned frequently in these pages, was the Rev. Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg, M.A., a learned young Lutheran divine who in 1733 had cast in his lot with the Brethren at Herrnhut. He was a noble representative of the mild and liberal type of pietism then flourishing at the University of Jena, where he had studied and then lectured as a professor. From Jena he had gone to Halle as pro- fessor and superintendent of school-work in the famous orphanage. Disagreement with the authorities of that university in consequence of his zealous, and at times incautious efforts, beyond the limits there approved, to cultivate fraternal relations and union in essentials among earnest men of different theological views, even proscribed heretics and separatists, had led to his summary dismissal by a royal decree secured against him by those who antagonized his views and feared his influence. This indignity, suffered in 1733, gave him to the Moravian Church. He became Count Zinzendorf's most valuable coadjutor and his successor in pre-eminent leadership. He, above all others, was influential in the establishment of Moravian work in America, and next to Zinzendorf is most prominently associated with the history of the Church in the eighteenth century both in Europe and America.
He sailed with his little colony from Gravesend, February 6, 1735, on the ship The Two Brothers, Captain Thompson, and landed at
genberg constituted what they called a Hausgemeine. At least five religious persuasions were represented in this union. Some of these men later joined the Moravian Church. Several others, who withdrew from all fellowship as separatists, became its enemies and traducers. Wiegner's farm lay two miles south of the present Kulpsville.
2 They were Anton Seiffert, John Toeltschig, Gotthard Demuth, Michael Haberland, George Haberland, Frederick Riedel, Peter Rose, George Waschke and Gottfried Haberecht -all but the last from Moravia and near-by parts of Bohemia, and two, Seiffert and Habe- recht, later with the Pennsylvania corps.
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PIONEER MOVEMENTS TO 1740.
Savannah, March 22. Two tracts of land had been granted them, one within the laid-out limits of the town, the other a short distance up the river. On the latter they built a rude hut, cleared several acres and planted corn. Then they proceeded to the erection of a sub- stantial house in the town. They suffered much from sickness and in September one of them, Frederick Riedel, died. Spangenberg supervised their operations, transacted their business with the local authorities and tradesmen, served them as pastor and physician and even did their cooking for a while so that none of them should have to leave their pressing work to perform this lighter duty.
In the last week of July, 1735, Bishop David Nitschmann started from Herrnhut for England with the second American colony of six- teen men and eight women.3 They sailed from Hamburg for England in September, embarked at London, October 12, in the ship Simonds, Captain Cornish; after lying off the Isle of Wight until December IO, put out to sea from Cowes, arrived at the mouth of the Savannah River, February 16 and finally landed in the town, February 20, 1736. With them came to Savannah General James Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia ; the Rev. John Wesley and his brother Charles, the Rev. Benjamin Ingham, Charles Delamotte, about eighty English passen- gers, a company of Salzburg exiles and a few other German and Swiss emigrants. 1137044
During the long voyage a warm friendship sprang up between the English clergymen and the Moravian Brethren, particularly between John Wesley and Bishop Nitschmann, who were much together and used the opportunity to learn each other's language. At Savannah Mr. Wesley lived with the Moravians until the parsonage he was to occupy was vacated by his predecessor, and during those weeks the bond was strengthened. He was impressed by the evidence of an advanced religious experience which he felt that he had not yet at-
3 The following persons comprised this second colony : John Boehner, Matthias Boehnisch, Gottlieb Demuth, Jacob Franck, Christian Adolph von Hermsdorf, David Jag, John Martin Mack, John Michael Meyer, Augustine Neisser, George Neisser, Henry Rascher, Matthias Seybold, David Tanneberger, his son John Tanneberger, Andrew Dober and Anna his wife, David Zeisberger and Rosina his wife, Regina wife of Gotthard Demuth, Rosina wife of Gottfried Haberecht, Catherine wife of Frederick Riedel who had died the previous Sep- tember, Judith wife of John Toeltschig, Anna Waschke mother of George Waschke, Juliana Jaeschke later married to Waschke. Including the Bishop, fifteen of these colonists, nine men and six women were from Moravia and Bohemia. Twelve of them, nine men and three women, of which number ten were from Moravia and Bohemia, were subsequently among the early inhabitants of Bethlehem.
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A HISTORY OF BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.
tained, and the secret on which he pondered did not become quite clear to him until after his return to England, as he declared, through his intercourse with another distinguished leader of the Brethren, the Rev. Peter Boehler, whose name is intimately associated with that of the Wesleys in the religious history of those times.
February 28 O. S., March 10 N. S., 1736, was a notable day at that first Moravian settlement in America. On that day Bishop Nitsch- mann organized the colony as a regular congregation on the plan of that at Herrnhut, ordained Anton Seiffert to the ministry and installed him in charge of the congregation, and at the same time ordained Spangenberg-regarded by virtue of his Lutheran ordina- tion as in deacon's orders-a presbyter preparatory to his departure for Pennsylvania to engage in other duties.4
At the same time Nitschmann, who in 1732 had gone to St. Thomas with Leonhard Dober and founded the first mission of the Moravian Church among the heathen, inaugurated its first missionary effort among the North American Indians. The original colonists under Spangenberg had won the good will of the celebrated Chief Tomo Tschatschi and prepared the way for this work. When the colony of 1736 arrived a school house was built on an island in the Savan- nah River, about five miles above the town, on which there was an Indian village, and to which they gave the name Irene. There on September 25, 1736, a school was opened in charge of Benjamin Ing- ham, who had offered his services for a season, assisted by Peter
4 The date of this first ordination service by a Moravian bishop in America - which so deeply impressed Wesley, as he relates in his celebrated Journal - as compared with the records of the Anglican and Roman Churches, is noteworthy. Until after the Revolution, the representatives of these communions in the English colonies remained under absentee episcopal charge, that of the Bishop of London and that of the Vicar Apostolic of London respectively, not being favored with the presence of a bishop to perform official acts in this country prior to 1784 and 1790 respectively ; just as the Roman Catholics of the Spanish and French settlements were yet under the Suffragan of Santiago de Cuba and the Bishop of Quebec. The alleged secret consecration of the Pennsylvania clergymen Welton and Talbot to the episcopacy in 1722 by the English Jacobite Bishop Ralph Taylor -the evidence of which is taken as convincing by many - is not treated as an established fact by the Protestant Episcopal Church. Dr. Talbot died at Burlington, N.J., in 1727. Dr. Wel- ton-in Philadelphia 1724-26-died at Lisbon in 1726. Even if such consecration were un- questioned, no evidence of any exercise of their episcopate has been found. It would seem therefore that the earliest unquestionable record of a regular ordination performed by a bishop of the Christian Church in the English colonies of North America is that of the ordination of Seiffert at Savannah by David Nitschmann, and that Nitschmann was the first bishop who unquestionably both located and performed episcopal functions in these colonies.
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PIONEER MOVEMENTS TO 1740.
Rose and his wife.5 Their work flourished unexpectedly. In a few months many boys and girls learned to read and a few even learned to write. They committed many passages of Scripture to memory and delighted to sing hymns. The adult Indians observed all this with wonder and admiration and their interest in hearing "the great word" stimulated the efforts of the missionaries to acquire the lan- guage of these people in order to communicate with them without an interpreter.
Spangenberg, having fulfilled his mission in Georgia, started for Pennsylvania, March 15, 1736, with credentials from Bishop Nitsch- mann and a letter of introduction from Governor Oglethorpe to Gov- ernor Thomas Penn. He was commissioned to look after the Schwenkfelders in whose welfare Zinzendorf was interested, to inves- tigate the spiritual condition of the German population generally and to gather information about the Indians. He made his home with George Boehnisch at the house of Christopher Wiegner and entered enthusiastically upon his new duties. Although Count Zinzendorf later said of him that at this time "he was yet too learned to be an apostle," he worked as a common laborer on Wiegner's farm in order to not be a burden to any one, to identify himself with the rustic popu- lation and to disarm the prejudice of those sects which disliked schoolmen and gentry and laid much stress on extreme plainness in dress and habit as a religious distinction. The knowledge he acquired and the experiences he made were of inestimable value to him in his subsequent career. During this sojourn in Pennsylvania he became acquainted with Henry Antes, already mentioned; Conrad Weiser, who gave him much information about the Indians; John Stephen Benezet, the Hugenot merchant of Philadelphia; Christopher Saur,
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