Fratrum_.” Only a few new settlements have been formed since Zinzendorf’s death, and none of any importance; while the hitherto flourishing Moravian settlements in Wetterau were destroyed and their members banished, in A.D. 1750, by the reigning prince, Count von Isenburg-Büdingen, on account of their refusing to take the oath of allegiance.--After the first attempt to establish societies among the German emigrants in Livonia and Esthonia in A.D. 1729-1743 had ended in the expulsion of the Herrnhuters, these regions proved in the second half of the century a more fruitful field than any other. They secured there a relation to the national church such as they never attained unto elsewhere. They had in these parts formally organized a church within the church, whose members, mostly peasants, felt convinced that they had been called by the Lord’s own voice as His chosen little flock, a proceeding which caused infinite trouble, especially in Livonia, to the faithful pastors, who perceived the deadly mischief that was being wrought, and witnessed against them from God’s word. This protest was too powerful and convincing to be disregarded, and now, not only too late, but also in too half-hearted a way, Herrnhut began, in A.D. 1857, to turn back, so as to save its Livonian institute by inward regeneration from certain overthrow. § 168.8. =The doctrinal peculiarities of the Brotherhood= cannot be quite correctly described as un-Lutheran, or anti-Lutheran. Bengel smartly characterized them in a single phrase: “They plucked up the stock of sound doctrine, stripped oft what was most essential and vital, and retained the half of it,” which not only then, but even still retains its truth and worth. Salvation is regarded as proceeding purely from the Son, the God-Man, so that the relation of the Father and of the Holy Spirit to redemption is scarcely even nominal; and the redemption of the God-Man again is viewed one-sidedly as consisting only in His sufferings and death, while the other side, that is grounded on His life and resurrection, is either carefully passed over, or its fruit is represented as borrowed from the atoning death. Thus not only justification, but sanctification is derived exclusively from the death of Christ, and this, not so much as a forensic substitutionary satisfaction, although that is not expressly denied, but rather as a Divine love-sacrifice which awakens an answering love in us. The whole of redemption is viewed as issuing from Christ’s blood and wounds; and since from this mode of viewing the subject God’s grace and love are made prominent rather than His righteousness, we hear almost exclusively of the gospel, and little or nothing of the law. All preaching and teaching were avowedly directed to the awakening of pious feelings of love to God, and thus tended to foster a kind of religious sentimentalism.