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
Again, the Count insisted on civil order. He appointed a number of other
officials. Some, called servants, had to clean the wells, to sweep the
streets, to repair the houses, and to trim the gardens. For the sick
there was a board of sick waiters; for the poor a board of almoners;
for the wicked a board of monitors; for the ignorant a board of
schoolmasters; and each board held a conference every week. Once a week,
on Saturday nights, the Elders met in Council; once a week, on Monday
mornings, they announced any new decrees; and all inhabitants vowed
obedience to them as Elders, to the Count as Warden, and finally to the
law of the land. Thus had the Count, as lord of the manor, drawn up a
code of civil laws to be binding on all. We have finished the Manorial
Injunctions and Prohibitions. We come to the free religious life of the
community.
Let us first clear a difficulty out of the way. As the Count was a loyal
son of the Lutheran Church, and regarded the Augsburg Confession as
inspired,[79] it seems, at first sight, a marvellous fact that here at
Herrnhut he allowed the Brethren to take steps which led ere long to the
renewal of their Church. He allowed them to sing Brethren's Hymns; he
allowed them to revive old Brethren's customs; he allowed them to hold
independent meetings; and he even resolved to do his best to revive the
old Church himself. His conduct certainly looked very inconsistent. If
a man in England were to call himself a loyal member of the Anglican
Church, and yet at the same time do his very best to found an
independent denomination, he would soon be denounced as a traitor to the
Church and a breeder of schism and dissent. But the Count's conduct can
be easily explained. It was all due to his ignorance of history. He had
no idea that the Bohemian Brethren had ever been an independent Church.
He regarded them as a branch of the Reformed persuasion. He regarded
them as a "Church within the Church," of the kind for which Luther had
longed, and which Spener had already established. He held his delusion
down to the end of his days; and, therefore, as Lutheran and Pietist
alike, he felt at liberty to help the Brethren in all their religious
endeavours.
For this purpose, therefore, he asked the settlers at Herrnhut to sign
their names to a voluntary "Brotherly Union"; and the chief condition of
the "Union" was that all the members agreed to live in friendship with
Christians of other denominations, and also to regard themselves as
members of the Lutheran Church. They attended the regular service at the
Parish Church. There they took the Holy Communion; there they had their
children baptized; and there the young people were confirmed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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