A History of the Moravian ChurchHutton, J. E. (Joseph Edmund)
Religion
A History of the Moravian Church
Hutton, J. E. (Joseph Edmund)
Moravian Church -- History
What happened to many of the exiles no tongue can tell. We know that
some Brethren went to Hungary and held together for thirty or forty
years; that some were welcomed by the Elector of Saxony and became
Lutherans; that some found their way to Holland and became Reformed
Protestants; that some settled in Lusatia, Saxony; that a few, such as
the Cennicks, crossed the silver streak and found a home in England; and
that, finally, a number remained in Bohemia and Moravia, and gathered in
the neighbourhood of Landskron, Leitomischl, Kunewalde and Fulneck. What
became of these last, the "Hidden Seed," we shall see before very long.
For the present they buried their Bibles in their gardens, held midnight
meetings in garrets and stables, preserved their records in dovecotes
and in the thatched roofs of their cottages, and, feasting on the
glorious promises of the Book of Revelation--a book which many of them
knew by heart--awaited the time when their troubles should blow by and
the call to arise should sound.
Meanwhile Comenius had never abandoned hope. He was sure that the
Brethren's Church would revive, and equally sure of the means of her
revival. For some years there had flourished in the town of Lissa a
famous Grammar School. It was founded by Count Raphael IV. Leszczynski;
it had recently become a Higher School, or what Germans call a
gymnasium, and now it was entirely in the hands of the Brethren. The
patron, Count Raphael V. Leszczynski, was a Brother;[57] the director
was John Rybinski, a Brethren's minister; the co-director was another
Brethren's minister, Michael Henrici; and Comenius accepted the post
of teacher, and entered on the greatest task of his life. He had two
objects before him. He designed to revive the Church of the Brethren
and to uplift the whole human race; and for each of these purposes
he employed the very same method. The method was education. If the
Brethren, said Comenius, were to flourish again, they must pay more
attention to the training of the young than ever they had done in days
gone by. He issued detailed instructions to his Brethren. They must
begin, he said, by teaching the children the pure word of God in their
homes. They must bring their children up in habits of piety. They must
maintain the ancient discipline of the Brethren. They must live in
peace with other Christians, and avoid theological bickerings. They must
publish good books in the Bohemian language. They must build new schools
wherever possible, and endeavour to obtain the assistance of godly
nobles. We have here the key to the whole of Comenius's career. It is
the fashion now with many scholars to divide his life into two distinct
parts. On the one hand, they say, he was a Bishop of the Brethren's
Church; on the other hand he was an educational reformer. The
distinction is false and artificial. His whole life was of a piece.
He never distinguished between his work as a Bishop and his work as
an educational reformer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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