Church History, Volume 3 (of 3)Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
History
Church History, Volume 3 (of 3)
Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
Church history
constitution; but the lot decided in its favour, while the idea
of continuing a pre-Reformation martyr church was not without a
certain charm. Thus Zinzendorf drew up a constitution with old
Moravian forms and names, on the basis of which the colony was
established, August 13th, A.D. 1727, under the name of the United
Brotherhood.
§ 168.3. =The Development of the Brotherhood down to Zinzendorf’s
Death=, A.D. 1727-1760.--With great energy the new society
proceeded to found settlements in Germany, Holland, England,
Ireland, Denmark, Norway, and North America, as well as among
German residents in other lands. In A.D. 1734, Zinzendorf
submitted to examination at Tübingen as candidate for license,
and in A.D. 1737 received episcopal consecration from the Berlin
court preacher, Jablonsky, who was at the same time bishop of
the Moravian Brethren, which the same prelate had two years
previously granted to Dr. Nitschmann, another member of the
society. The efforts of the Brethren to spread their cause now
attracted attention. The Saxon government in A.D. 1736 sent to
Herrnhut a commission, of which Löscher was a member. But in
A.D. 1736, before it submitted its report, which on the whole
was favourable, Zinzendorf quitted the country, probably by the
elector’s command at the instigation of the Austrian government,
which objected to the harbouring of so many Bohemian and Moravian
emigrants. Like all those at this time persecuted on account
of religion he took refuge in Wetterau (§ 170, 2). With his
little family of pilgrims he settled at Ronneburg near Büdingen,
founded the prosperous churches of Marienborn and Herrnhaag, and
travelled extensively in Europe and America. This period of exile
was the period when the society was most successful in spreading
outwardly, but it was also the period when it suffered most from
troubles and dissensions within. It was bitterly attacked by
Lutheran theologians, and much more venomously by apostates from
its own fold. The Brethren at this time afforded only too much
ground for misunderstanding and reproach. To this period belongs
the famous fiction of a special covenant, the Pandora-box
of all other absurdities; the development of the count’s own
theological views and peculiar form of expression in his numerous
works; the composition and introduction of unsavoury spiritual
songs, with their silly conceits and many blasphemous and even
obscene pictures and analogies; the market-crier laudations of
their church, the not always pure methods of propaganda, the
introduction of a marriage discipline fitted to break down all
modest restraints; and, finally, the so-called _Niedlichkeiten_,
or boisterous festivals. Even the pietists opposed these
antinomian excesses. Tersteegen, too (§ 169, 1), whose mystic
tendency inclined him strongly toward pietist views, reproached
the Herrnhuters with frivolity. This polemic, disagreeable as it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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