CHAPTER XXV.

UNITAS FRATRUM AND ATTEMPTED CHURCH UNITY.

The Schwenkfelders-The Skippack BrethrenThe "Pennsylvania Religion"-Mixed result of the Whitefield movement-Unitas Fratrum, or Moravians, or Herrnhuters-Zinzendorf-Reorganization of the Unitas as a company within the Lutheran fold to promote personal religion-Renewal of the episcopate-Laborers in PennsylvaniaZinzendorf consecrated a bishop Failure to Christianize Indians before the arrival of the Moravians-Rauch's mission to the Mohicans— The Lehigh settlements-Zinzendorf's arrival and earliest proceedings in Pennsylvania-Bethlehem named-The Conferences-Zinzendorf's visits to Indians-Revolt of Lutherans Kraft-Mühlenberg-Zinzendorf leaves America-The English Moravians in Philadelphia and Moravian house of worship at Heidelberg-Mühlenberg reclaims the Lutherans-Churches built, including that at "Trappe"-Wagner and Brunnholtz-NybergUnsuccessful project to unite Swedish and German Lutherans-Disorders at Lancaster-Nyberg's commission from Sweden is withdrawn, and he joins the Moravians-Indian converts of the Moravians build Gnadenhütten-Schlatter-A Reformed Coetus established-The Synod of 1748 of the Congregation of God in the Spirit becomes the first Synod of the Moravians-A Lutheran Ministerium and Synod organized-Zinzendorf's later career.

On referring to the chapter on the Church of England, it will be seen that the first visit of Whitefield to Pennsylvania was in the year of the breaking out

of war with Spain, and that he came twice in 1740: and the chapter on the Irish and their Kirk has told of the separation of the Presbyterians into Old Side and New Side in 1741. The last months of 1741 and the nine months following cover the labors in Pennsylvania of the great religious leader, Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. He had been preceded hither by immigrants grateful for his kindness, and by missionaries from the body which he had reorganized.

From his estate, or barony, of Berthelsdorf in Upper Lusatia came several persons in or before 1733, of whom respectively the religious denomination, whether Schwenkfelder or Moravian, is not clear. Nineteen persons, most of them from Berthelsdorf, met at Haarlem, and proceeded to Rotterdam in June of that year, and thence sailed in the "Pennsylvania Merchant," reaching Philadelphia on Sep. 28 (N. S.), the males over sixteen making promise of allegiance on Sep. 18, 1733 (O. S.). Johann Klemm, Gotlob Klemm, Georg Scholtz, and David Scholtz (spelling as in Rupp's Collection of 30000 Names, instead of as in Colonial Records, Vol. III) of the passengers promising allegiance, may be identified as among the nineteen; but the tradition which makes them Schwenkfelders is probably incorrect. Rev. Abraham Reincke's Register of the Members of the Moravian Church mentions John G. Klemm, organ builder, and his wife among the Moravians, who, as will be mentioned, received the sacrament on Aug. 13, 1727. Rev. William C. Reichel, in annotating the list given by Reincke, says that Klemm was born in Dresden in 1690, and, after settling in Philadelphia, spent some time in New York. Another of the four supposed Schwenkfelders on the "Pennsylvania Merchant," viz: David Scholtz, who speaks of his father, evidently Georg Scholtz, as a fellow voyager, and of a brother George Scholtze as already in Pennsylvania, wrote a Reise Beschreibung, of

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 Schöltz, evidently the brother, was among the so-called Palatines 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 Schwenkfelders 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 Collection 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 reformer who at one time aided Luther, but afterwards was reprobated by him for an interpretation (which Schwenckfelt believed to have been miraculously revealed 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, consequently treating the Bible as insufficient, and the sacraments 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)

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 Christopher Heydrick's Historical Sketch, prefixed to Rev. Balthasar Heebner's Genealogical Record of the Descendants 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 unwilling to escape annoyance by participating in the tolerated 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 Herrnhut, allowed the Moravians to stay there, that government, 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, published in 1771. They arrived in Philadelphia on Sep. 22, 1734 (N. S.), and promised allegiance on Sep. 12,

1734 (O. S.), and spent the next day in thanksgiving. Accordingly, the Schwenkfelders keep the 24th of September as an anniversary. Georg Weiss was elected in December, 1734, as instructor, and to give such spiritual 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, remained 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 theologicum 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 differed with them, the adherents of the nine particularly despising the Lutherans and the Reformed, not only