USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. II > Part 28
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which there is a translation in Penna. Mag., Vol. X, page 167, a narrative of the trip of himself and twelve others from Herrnhut to Haarlem, and of the voyage of the nineteen from Haarlem to Philadelphia, but does not speak of the voyagers as Schwenkfelders. They are called such by an addition in a later handwriting to the title on the cover of the MS. Georg Scholtz, evidently the brother, was among the so-called Pala- tines who promised allegiance on Oct. 14, 1731, and, whether indeed a Schwenkfelder or a Moravian, came to Pennsylvania before any other person known to have been of either denomination. That there were Schwenk- felders in the Penn dominions after the aforesaid arrival of the "Pennsylvania Merchant," and before the arrival hereafter mentioned, is proved by an entry in the Reise-Diarium of Herr von Beck under date of Philadelphia, June 6, 1734, quoted by Rupp in his Col- lection of 30000 Names: "Hier sind von allen Religionen und Secten: * * Böhmisten, Schwenckfeldianer.
The Schwenkfelders, or "Confessors of the Glory of Christ," as they called themselves, were the followers more or less implicit of Caspar Schwenckfelt (or Schwenckfeld) von Ossig (or Ossing) of Silesia, a re- former who at one time aided Luther, but afterwards was reprobated by him for an interpretation (which Schwenckfelt believed to have been miraculously re- vealed to himself, but which was opposed to Luther's) of our Lord's words at the institution of the Supper, and for "deification" of Christ's human body, and for reliance upon direct enlightenment and grace, conse- quently treating the Bible as insufficient, and the sacra- ments as superfluous. Schwenckfelt's disciples, in the doctrine resembling that of the Inner Light, in disuse of the sacraments, and in refusing to fight, anticipated the Quakers. Some association is said to have taken place with certain admiring readers (the Böhmisten)
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of the works of Jacob Böhme (or Behmen) of Görlitz, called the Teutonic Philosopher, a mystic, who lived at a later date than Schwenckfelt.
Apparently those Schwenkfelders with whom we are concerned, had not been an organized religious society in Silesia, their native country, but individual disciples, who abstained from worship at the local churches, and held meetings for reading and prayer. Phebe Earle Gibbons's Pennsylvania Dutch and Other Essays, from which much information can be obtained as to the settlers of the interior of Pennsylvania, and Chris- topher Heydrick's Historical Sketch, prefixed to Rev. Balthasar Heebner's Genealogical Record of the De- scendants of the Schwenkfelders, narrate the measures taken in the time of the Emperor Charles VI, lord of Silesia, to bring the Schwenkfelders into the Roman Catholic Church. Some who did not yield, were unwill- ing to escape annoyance by participating in the toler- ated Lutheran worship, and 170 families left home in 1726, some leaving their possessions, and fled to Upper Lusatia, then part of Saxony, and, in that district, found shelter at Wirsa, Görlitz, Hennersdorf near Görlitz, Berthelsdorf, and Herrnhut, being hospitably received by the Senate of Görlitz and by Zinzendorf at Berthelsdorf. When the government of Saxony, after investigating the religion at Berthelsdorf and Herrn- hut, allowed the Moravians to stay there, that govern- ment, however, directed the Schwenkfelders to leave the country. Upon the reports of those persons from Zinzendorf's lands who had, in or before 1733, gone to Pennsylvania, about 40 families of the denomination followed thither in 1734 in the "St. Andrew" from Rotterdam. Their journey, too, is the subject of a Reise Beschreibung, which is printed as an appendix to the Erlauterung für Herrn Caspar Schwenckfeld, pub- lished in 1771. They arrived in Philadelphia on Sep. 22, 1734 (N. S.), and promised allegiance on Sep. 12,
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1734 (O. S.), and spent the next day in thanksgiving. Accordingly, the Schwenkfelders keep the 24th of Sep- tember as an anniversary. Georg Weiss was elected in December, 1734, as instructor, and to give such spirit- ual services as might be required. At his death in 1740, he was succeeded by Balthasar Hoffmann. Kept apart by disuse of the sacraments from nearly every Christian organization, as already in Germany from the neighbouring Moravian society, and also differing in practices, as well as language, from the Quakers, the Schwenkfelders, whose first location in Pennsylvania was about the Perkiomen and Skippack Creeks, re- mained a separate body.
At the house of Christoph Wiegner, one of the passengers on the "St. Andrew," and said to have been a Schwenkfelder, began gatherings of religious men of German or other foreign birth or parentage, taking the name of Vereinigte Skippack Brüder. Eventually Wiegner and nearly all the others became Moravians. Grüber, the Inspirationist, resorted to the gatherings. He wrote in 1736 an appeal for unity among the various denominations of Christians. He may somewhat have prepared the way for the greater movement in this direction.
We should make some allowance for odium theologi- cum in a religious writer's portrayal of the holders of opinions or the members of a party opposed to his : but we must glance at the deplorable picture which the Moravian Bishop, August Gottlieb Spangenberg, in his Life of Zinzendorf, paints of the religious condition of the Germans in Pennsylvania about this time. They were, Spangenberg says, nearly 100000 in number. There were nine sects-he evidently does not count the Moravian-besides the Lutherans and Reformed, the adherents of each speaking harshly of those who dif- fered with them, the adherents of the nine particularly despising the Lutherans and the Reformed, not only
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because there was so little animation in their meetings, but because, he says, there was much to object to in the attendants' lives and conduct. On the other hand, so many of the inhabitants, he tells us, lay in apathy or unbelief that there was a common expression, "he is of the Pennsylvania religion," to denote any one who cared not for God and His word.
Whitefield and the Tennents brought about a great awakening, more particularly in the English-speaking population. Whitefield, on his first visit to Pennsyl- vania, preached at Wiegner's to many Germans. As to Church Unity, as has been seen, Whitefield drew closely together British Dissenters and those Anglicans who adopted the principles once called by American Episcopalians and Englishmen "Evangelical" and "Low Church"; but he broke one or more Dissenting bodies, and the Church of England, each into hostile camps waging a warfare as bitter as had been the al- most forgotten contest between Presbyterianism and Prelacy. After having unsatisfactory relations with the Moravians in Pennsylvania, and becoming a strong Calvinist, he violently contended in England against the Unitas Fratrum, as the Moravian body called itself : but the contention is not one of the subjects of this history; for his followers in Pennsylvania were not dealing with the faithful of any denomination collec- tively.
The local branch of the Unitas is a feature of Penn- sylvania's colonial history really more distinguishing than the branch of the Society of Friends; for within the province long were comprised the only Herrnhuters, as Europeans called them, resident in North America, while Quakers and even Quaker Meetings were in a number of the colonies. It is not necessary to trace a connection with the earlier teachers, parties, or na- tional hierarchies whose views or some of whose views the founders held, in order to show that the organiza-
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tion into which the latter resolved themselves, and which Zinzendorf resuscitated, was the earliest opposed to the Church of Rome of all the Christian bodies which are known to have sent settlers to Pennsylvania before recent times. From the History written by Bishop Edmund de Schweinitz, we learn, that, for some years before 1467, there had been a number of gather- ings throughout Bohemia and its dependency Moravia of persons holding views very near the consensus of most Protestants of later times, and calling themselves "Fratres Legis Christi" or simply "Fratres." The principal gathering had been started by persons from Thein parish, Prague, making a religious settlement at Kunwald in the barony of Senftenberg near the Silesian border. General synods had brought the scat- tered Brethren into unity. Twenty-eight elders had in 1457 been elected spiritual guides; but priests in har- mony with the members were performing the minis- terial functions according to a simplified liturgy, and there had been no schism from the National Church of Bohemia, then and for years afterwards controlled by the Calixtine (cup to the laity), or Utraquist (in both kinds), party. The Fratres adopted the drawing of lots as a means of ascertaining Divine direction. In 1467, as the result of such drawing of lots, the Fratres undertook to establish an independent ministry for themselves. They believed in baptizing infants, but, as an act of separation from other Christians, on this occasion rebaptized one another, and afterwards re- baptized anyone joining them. On the other hand, while they believed in ordination by presbyters, they, to con- form to the practice of the Universal Church, caused three of themselves, who had been duly ordained priests by Roman, Utraquist, or Waldensian bishops, to be consecrated bishops by two Waldensians, one of whom is said to have been himself consecrated by one of the prelates attending the Council of Basle. Thus invested
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with episcopal rank, although subsequently the title used was more frequently "Antistes," or Senior, than "Episcopus," these three ordained as priests three per- sons selected by lot, and then consecrated as Bishop one of them, selected in the same way. Through him, who became the actual head, the succession was main- tained throughout the period when the Unitas grew to large dimensions, flourished in a Polish branch and a branch in Germany and Hungary, and then dwindled almost to extinction. The accession of various Wal- densians led to a confusion with the latter, and designa- tion by the name of the latter by some writers: but
the name "Bohemian Brethren" came into general use. Luther, hailed as a co-worker for Christendom's puri- fication, had sufficient influence to cause the abolition of the practice of rebaptizing converts from the Roman Church. The Zwinglians introduced views which so commended themselves that a union was formed be- tween the Zwinglians and the Brethren in Poland, and John Bechtel of Germantown, in issuing, in 1742, a cate- chism for the Reformed, declared it based upon the Synod of Bern "as held by the Moravian Church." Protestantism was pretty well exterminated in Bohemia and its dependency Moravia. Elsewhere in Germany the toleration which the Lutherans and Reformed ex- acted from the House of Austria was not extended to any worship other than Lutheran, Reformed, or Roman Catholic.
By 1722, the Unitas was reduced to the following, viz: a small body in Poland, presided over by its own Bishop, a few clergymen and congregations in Hungary, and a few families of humble station in Moravia. The latter were occasionally visited surreptitiously by clergymen from Hungary, and might have been deemed a part of the German and Hungarian branch, the Bishop for whom, the learned Jablonsky, was Court Chaplain at Berlin, where the Reformed was the re-
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ligion of the King. Some dwellers at Sehlen, in Moravia, of the remnant of the Unitas in that country, wishing to emigrate to where they could more openly enjoy their forefathers' religion, heard through Chris- tian David, a native of Senftleben, that Zinzendorf was willing to receive upon his manor of Berthelsdorf, in Upper Lusatia, those oppressed for conscience sake. So, ten persons, including four children, went thither with Christian David, leaving their native land in the Spring of 1722. After laying out on the Berthelsdorf estate a village called Herrnhut, they were visited by the owner and welcomed. He had purchased the estate as a place of retirement from the world, and a home for God-fearing persons; he had started the erection of a dwelling-house for his family to occupy during part of each year; and he had gathered a religious circle pre- sided over by himself and the Lutheran Pastor of Ber- thelsdorf, the Lutheran Pastor of Görlitz, and Baron Friedrich von Watteville.
Zinzendorf was born in Dresden on May 26, 1700, and baptized in the Lutheran Church, the Electoral Princess of Saxony and the Electoral Princess of the Palatinate being sponsors with Spener, the Pietist leader. Of ancient lineage-the family boasting twenty- two preceding generations-and high rank, albeit a younger son, possessed moreover of some wealth, Zin- zendorf was early inclined to seek the humble post, deemed inappropriate for one of his order, of a Luth- eran pastor; but his family deterred him, and he pre- pared for a diplomatic career. After studying at the University of Wittenberg, he gave this up, and, al- though accepting a seat in the Aulic and Justitial Council, devoted himself to religious work, holding conferences, preaching, editing literary works, and writing hymns and other pieces, imbued with the ideas of the Pietists, and without intention of withdrawing from the Lutheran fold. His wife, i.e. his first wife,
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a sister of the Count of Reuss,-a family subsequently made sovereign princes,-thoroughly cooperated in her husband's work. Although he had studied theology, he deemed religious feeling the main thing for a Chris- tian, and, as to recondite points beyond a certain basis of belief, was tolerant-in fact, his sympathy for Roman Catholics was made one of the charges against him. He saw no need of higher education, theological or literary, for the mass of mankind; and his teaching may be said to have been upon the principle : only milk for babes.
The Moravians who came in 1722 or soon afterwards, joined his religious circle, and apparently all of suit- able age received the communion with him from the Lutheran Pastor at Berthelsdorf, even after the arrival of John Toeltschig and others who yearned for the old customs of their forefathers. David Nitschmann and his family came from Zauchtenthal in 1725. An effort being made to get into communication with those of the Unitas scattered in other countries, numbers were brought in: there was a split, and the majority were led to hold aloof from the sacrament as administered by Lutheran rite. Zinzendorf began expostulatory preaching to the seceders, who then asked him to take charge as a lay head and guardian of their sect. To pre- serve them in communion with the Lutherans, even on condition of the perpetuation of the old form and consti- tion of the Unitas, he accepted the office of Superin- tendent, under statutes agreed upon unanimously by the congregation at Herrnhut on May 12, 1727. There were twelve elders under him, and Watteville was made his assistant. The Pastor of Berthelsdorf was to be resorted to for clerical functions. On Wednesday, Aug. 13, 1727, the Moravian immigrants and others partook of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which was celebrated in the Lutheran Church at Berthelsdorf. The day "is held in remembrance as an eventful one
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in the history of the renewed Church of the United Brethren." Care must be taken not to confuse the English equivalent of Unitas Fratrum with the same words as the title of the Dunkards. In minutes of the Moravians later than May 12, 1727, there was a declara- tion of satisfaction with the Lutheran liturgy as used at Berthelsdorf in 1727, and a disclaimer of any inten- tion to be separatists. A congregation at Berthelsdorf adopting the statutes of Herrnhut, this society of peculiar customs within the Lutheran fold began to spread. An account of the rapid growth, diversified activity, and system of spiritual inspection and direc- tion at the headquarters, is given in a book by Henry Rimius attacking Zinzendorf and his followers, but entitled, rather deceptively, A Candid Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Herrnhuters. The founders persisted in calling themselves Moravian or Bohemian Brethren, and, on Zinzendorf's once proposing the re- linquishment of the ancient methods, the others ob- jected; so there was a casting of the lot, when their wish appeared to him as the Lord's direction. Yet the Herrnhuters were kept to an avowal of the Augsburg Confession, which the old Unitas had never in explicit terms adopted. Zinzendorf, passing a theological ex- amination, obtained from the Lutheran authorities the ecclesiastical status of candidatus theologie, deacon or licentiate.
Rimius says that until Zinzendorf's resignation in March, 1730, Zinzendorf was Trustee or Guardian of the company, being entitled Vorsteher, which he ex- plained to be Director ad interim, i. e. while the society was under tutelage. Appointed to resume the position, he did so on Jany. 30, 1733, and kept it until excused in 1743. Chosen on Nov. 21, 1743, Minister Plenipo- tentiary and ŒEconomist, with power to choose his suc- cessor, he did not accept until the close of the following
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year. At one time he called himself Lord Advocate of the Unitas Fratrum.
The reader who takes up Rimius's book and Rev. Dr. Archibald Maclaine's edition of Mosheim's Ecclesi- astical History will find enunciations by Zinzendorf and other Moravians tending to subvert the Christian faith and a moral life. Not being able to pass over the quo- tations as spurious, we can reflect that arguers are prone to exaggeration, that preachers are not self con- tained, that a man full to the brim with oratory is apt to slop over. Beyond this, however, there were times when Zinzendorf must have been crazy, when he talked like a poet of obscene rites. Yet the Moravians were Orthodox, devout, and continent. Not a word from any Pennsylvanian has been found by the present writer to impugn their teaching or their practice: nor did Zinzendorf impress the colonists who were not his ecclesiastical opponents as anything worse than an odd- ity. Yet, withal, he had grand ideas and very consider- able abilities.
Without a parallelism being seen between the freaks of the enthusiast, Zinzendorf, and the final imbecility of the Quietist, Penn, there are such points of resem- blance in the careers of Zinzendorf and Penn, as, had they been heroes of prehistoric times, would lead some scholars to declare the two identical or confused with each other: witness, foregoing of advantages of worldly station, to become a preacher; founding of a religious colony in Pennsylvania; shortness of stay there; finan- cial embarrassment; loss of a son in whom hopes centered; and even second marriage, the woman being below the man in rank,-in Zinzendorf's case, she was a peasant. Like Penn, Zinzendorf exerted great influ- ence outside of his sect: his judgment in temporal affairs was sought by potentates, the King of Denmark asking him to join the Cabinet, and bestowing upon him the order of Dannebrog. He was instrumental in
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the formation in various places of associations of those awakened from religious lethargy. He used the Herrn- huters, united by Moravian customs as regulations for themselves, as a society of men and women to carry the Gospel to the heathen or those benighted. Under his inspiration and care, the scarcely visible remnants of the Unitas rose, Phoenix-like, to be as great a mission- ary order of non-Papal Christians as the Franciscans have been of Papal. The Herrnhuters from the earliest days of their organization went over the world, not to preach Lutheranism, not to spread usages, but to teach elementary Christianity, or to develop personal religion among the members of Christian Churches: sympa- thetic societies were formed outside of the Lutheran denomination, in the Reformed of Holland as well as of Germany, and in the Anglican, without withdrawing the faithful from their old connections; and an entrance was even attempted in the Greek Church and the Coptic.
Members of the Moravian organization, who, as Spangenberg says, were unlearned persons, whom no ecclesiastical consistory would think of ordaining, went to the West Indies, and to Greenland. The desirability of ordained ministers to baptize converts from heathen- ism, led to the expedient of having a Moravian bishop who could ordain to a missionary pastorate. David Nitschmann was selected by lot, and sent to Jablonsky, the surviving Bishop for Germany and Hungary of the old Unitas Fratrum. He with the consent of Sitkovius, the Bishop for the Polish branch, consecrated Nitsch- mann on March 13, 1735, as Bishop of the foreign churches of the Brethren. Zinzendorf explained, that, notwithstanding this, the Moravians were still Luther- ans belonging to the parish of Berthelsdorf. This was perhaps partly to secure the toleration accorded in Germany to Lutherans.
George Böhnisch (called Georg Bansche in Rupp's Collection of 30000 Names) and Christopher Baus
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(called Christoph Pauss) and perhaps other Moravians were passengers accompanying the Schwenkfelders on the "St. Andrew" in 1734. The Memorials of the Moravian Church edited by Rev. William C. Reichel give much information as to the proceedings of the Moravians in the North American colonies for a quar- ter of a century following Böhnisch's arrival. He re- mained in Pennsylvania about three years, during which time August Gottlieb Spangenberg, previously a professor at Halle, and Nitschmann, the new Bishop, came on visits.
Returning home, Nitschmann joined Jablonsky in consecrating Zinzendorf as a Bishop on May 20, 1737, in Berlin, with the consent of the Polish Bishop. Spangenberg says that Zinzendorf decided to receive the episcopal degree in succession from the Unitas, rather than a Lutheran consistory's ordination as a pastor, because there was a disposition in the Church of England to recognize the holy orders of the Unitas. Zinzendorf for a while signed himself "Ludovicus Moraviensis." By the time he came to Pennsylvania, he, in order to relieve the Moravians from such opposi- tion as was personal to him, had resigned his bishopric, others had been chosen and consecrated, and he was described as Episcopus Emeritus.
Among all Protestant bodies, as well as among the missionaries composing the Unitas, its American branch has distinction for what it did among the so- called aborigines of the Middle States. Only a few items, however, of the story can appear in annals of the period covered by this book. Down to the arrival of the Moravians, practically nothing had been achieved within the bounds of Pennsylvania and the Counties on Delaware in the way of converting the Indians to Christianity. The Jesuits or other Roman Catholic priests of Canada had baptized several of the Cones- togas in early times. A Swedish minister had at-
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tempted the conversion of some chiefs, but found him- self unequal to answering their objections. Some Quakers had preached to the savages apparently with- out their being in the least moved. The efforts of the Church of England in this direction had been confined to the province of New York.
David Brainerd entered the field within a few years after Zinzendorf's visit, preaching at an Indian village below the Water Gap as early as May, 1744, soon doubling the number of his hearers, baptizing Moses Fonda Tatemy on July 21, 1745, and dying in 1747.
Apparently the earliest Moravian success among the Indians was achieved in 1740 by Christian Henry Rauch within the province of New York, where for some years there was a mission among the Mohicans at Shekomeko. The story of one conversion is an in- stance where the strong preaching of the Redeemer's sacrifice made an impression. Rauch met Tschoop, or Wasamapah, a Mohican, in the street in the city of New York, very drunk and dangerous. Rauch joined him, and appealed to him by the blood of Jesus Christ. Tschoop, in his condition, could catch only the word "blood," often repeated by the mild stranger, but could not forget it, and, when sober, came to seek enlighten- ment. Formerly the most feared Indian of his neigh- bourhood, he was the first or one of the first to seek the benefit of that "blood." At his baptism, delayed until April, 1742, he received the name of John.
Peter Böhler, who, with other Moravians, was on the sloop which brought Whitefield and Seward from Savannah to New Castle in April, 1740, had been or- dained as Pastor by Zinzendorf. Whitefield's employ- ment of the Moravians in building at Nazareth, his discharge of them, and the ultimate transfer of the property to the Unitas, are mentioned in the chapter on the Church of England. In the Spring of 1741, Bp. Nitschmann having joined the others in the neighbour-
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