Part 30

[109] Another person says, that if a man had no proposal to make, he left it to the authorities to suggest a woman; but the authorities never forced a woman upon him against his will.

[110] A lady whom I met at Nazareth spoke of the visits that she used to make in the widow-house, when they went at one, had vesper of coffee and sugar-cake at two, and left at five.

[111] Upon this passage, a friend makes the following remark: “Not regular occupants, but Moravian missionaries or strangers who might arrive in large bodies; twenty, I think, would be a large number.”

[112] _Ayfrahtaw_ I heard this word pronounced.

[113] There were two log houses, says a friend.

[114] They not only receive tuition here, but board and clothing, and a similar privilege is extended to the sons of preachers.

[115] During the period of the anti-slavery agitation, preceding the war, the Moravians as a body did not take an anti-slavery stand. Their members were allowed to hold slaves, like those of almost all the other sects in this country. Their European brethren did not agree with them on this subject.

[116] A recent writer tells us that the upper, middle, and lower parts of Montgomery County, the lower end of Berks, and the south corner of Lehigh contain the only settlement of Schwenkfelders in the wide world. He adds that it is no misnomer to call these people the Pennsylvania German Quakers. It will be seen, however, that they are more ancient than George Fox.

[117] _Phlox subulata._

[118] This feminine termination has not disappeared from the dialect. Mr. Rauch speaks of “de olt Lawbucksy,” which is rendered, old Mrs. Lawbucks.

[119] The decline in the severity of the cap seems to have reached its lowest point among the Moravians, where but few women in this country wear caps in church. See “Bethlehem and the Moravians.”

[120] At Flourtown, or Chestnut Hill, the English language is used, and there is no instruction in German.

[121] See article “Ephrata.”

[122] It appears that there was also extemporaneous prayer during the exercises.

[123] Why is not Schwenkfeld spoken of by the title _von Ossing_? We read of Ulrich von Hütten, German scholar and reformer.

[124] In using the name Schwenkfeld, I have abbreviated it a little, giving it as it is in the New American Cyclopædia, which calls him, however, Von Schwenkfeld. The Cyclopædia, in speaking of his writings, some ninety treatises, says that they are regarded as one of the most valuable sources of the history of the Reformation.

[125] A copy of this volume has been deposited for reference in the library of the German Society, Philadelphia.

[126] That portion of Silesia which was the home of the Schwenkfelders lies east of Saxony, the home of Count Zinzendorf. It, or the greater part of it, was conquered by Frederick the Great, and added to Prussia.

[127] The clergy, _die Gelehrten_.

[128] _Erläuterung._—Schwenkfeld appears to have abstained from the sacraments for a great part of his life,—from the outward forms, at least, if we may add the expression.

[129] The three folios before spoken of in this article were published within ten years after his death, and it seems possible that the place of printing was omitted on account of the opposition to his works.

[130] In the New American Cyclopædia Schwenkfeld is said to have differed from Luther and others upon the deification of the body Christ. In the latter part of this essay this point is spoken of again.

[131] Ulm, a town in Würtemberg, on the left bank of the Danube. It was long an imperial free city.

[132] This title was probably not in former times their chosen name. In a little inartistic aria, near the close of the _Erläuterung_, they are twice called _die Stillen_, or the quiet ones. Looking in a German dictionary for this word, I find “_die Stillen_” is rendered Quakers. In the same aria they are called _die Friedlichen_, or the peaceful ones. One of Schwenkfeld’s volumes, a collection, states that they were gathered and put in order by _the fellow-confessors and lovers of the glories and truth of Jesus Christ_.

[133] As in the principality of Lower Silesia Lutheran preachers had been installed in nearly all the offices, many of the common people who had accepted Schwenkfeld’s teachings stood back in stillness, not being able conscientiously to agree with these teachers. This was very offensive to the parsons, and they soon made use of their high dignity against tender consciences to force such persons to their means of grace,—to make them come to the baptismal font, to the pulpit, and the altar.—_Schwenkfeld’s Erläuterung_, chap. iv. The Schwenkfelders express the opinion that the action of the Lutheran clergy, in calling attention to them, frequently caused their persecution by the Catholic authorities.

[134] Digging trenches for military defence, and working the galleys or great boats of the Mediterranean.

[135] They do not seem to have been very profitable as soldiers. One man can lead a horse to water, but several cannot make him drink.

[136] _Herrschaft._ The narrative is condensed from the _Erläuterung_, or Explanation.

[137] Mention is made of the time when the destroyer came upon the destroyer because his measure was full,—namely, the Thirty Years’ War, and the banishment of the Lutherans from the imperial dominions.

[138] See _Erläuterung_, or Explanation. The passage is slightly abridged.

[139] Hence we may infer that the Schwenkfelders forbade marriages with those not of their own persuasion. During the period of their troubles it seems that marriage by the church was at times refused them, no doubt from their refusing the sacrament. Maimed funeral rites were also among the persecutions of which they complained. In speaking thus of their decline, they may, however, overestimate their numbers in former times.

The following characteristic sketch may be introduced here nearly in the words of the original: The two pastors in Harpersdorf having been called to a new church, there came as pastor Herr John Samuel Neander (the pastor Neander who died in July 1759). He was by nature a very fiery man, so that he hardly knew how to govern his passions; by birth a Brandenburger, from Frankfort on the Oder. When he was installed, the Herr Superintendent in Liegnitz brought before him that he was a stranger, and therefore he might not know how it was in Harpersdorf, that there was a people there, who had already lived there about two hundred years, called Schwenkfelders. Therefore he would give him good advice, that he should leave these people in peace; preceding pastors had tried it enough, and had accomplished nothing by force. But if he thought he could not endure these people, he should say so, and another would be put into the place.

But Herr Neander promised everything good, and did not keep to it. For soon after entering upon his office he gave out that he had sworn to bury none of the Schwenkfelders as before practised, and this he began to carry out. See _Erläuterung_, chap. v.

[140] The aria already alluded to says,—

“Throw their dead away, like foul corruption, The cow-path is too good; don’t tread upon the grass; The father shall not follow the body of his child, Nor the wife accompany her husband to the house of death.”

The word that I have translated cattle-path, etc., is _viehweg_. A note upon this verse of the aria says, “1722. Three hundred persons lie upon the cow-paths at Harpersdorf and Langendorff.” If so many were buried during the time of the Catholic mission, these people must have been numerous.

[141] Zinzendorf’s estate of Berthelsdorf was, it seems, near the town of Gorlitz.

[142] By agriculture? rather than in the town of Gorlitz.

[143] See “Bethlehem and the Moravians.”

[144] The word translated gingerbread is _Pfeffer-kuchen_, or pepper-cakes. Pepper-nuts are now made in Lancaster County,—a delicate cake, as I have seen them, somewhat resembling jumbles. If plainer they would be like the New England cookies. Cooky comes from the German _kuchen_?

In Allentown, a young gentleman tells me that the people of Lehigh County, all through, eat Schwenkfelder-cake. “Our mothers made them for us. They are a kind of vesper-cake, or rusk baked in a loaf.” In Allentown the name is sometimes pronounced Schwinkfelder.

[145] No one should confound these emigrants from the Palatinate with the Palatines for whom William Penn desires the friendship of the Indians. See “Swiss Exiles,” in this volume. The numerous refugees from the Palatinate probably came from different motives; some for religious freedom, and some to earn their bread. Many German emigrants were redemptionists,—_i.e._, they sold their time to pay for their voyage. Of this class, we learn, was an ancestor of the late John Covode.

[146] Mr. Weiser tells us, in speaking of the Schwenkfelders, that on a late occasion, having heard that the tombs of their ancestors, near Liegnitz and Gorlitz, were fast being desecrated, and the earth, with their very dust, carried away for road-making purposes, their Pennsylvania posterity collected a handsome sum and forwarded it to the authorities, with a view of purchasing the grounds, and having them set apart and enclosed as the burying-ground of the Silesian Schwenkfelders. It is not believed, however, he adds, that their moneys were appropriated to the laudable end which they had in view.

This narrative might apply to those Silesians who were buried upon the cow-paths (Mr. Weiser says, taken to the carrion pit or bone commons), but does it apply to them after they had taken refuge at Gorlitz?

[147] It has been estimated that ninety-five in one hundred of the Schwenkfelders are farmers.

[148] In the Rules and Ordinances of the Schwenkfelder community may be found this passage: “Yet a Christian places no holiness in wearing the oldest fashioned clothes; he also takes care not quickly to ape all new fashions, much less does he make it his business to bring up new ones.”

[149] Mr. Weiser speaks as if the singing was in the dialect. The following is a copy of some lines which were sung at their meeting-house when I attended, from which the student of German may observe the quality of the language, and the theologian may notice, as it seems to me, two or three of their peculiar doctrines:

“Jehovah, Vater, Sohn, und Geist! O Segens Bronn, der ewig fleuszt! Durchfleusz Herz, Sinn, und Wandel wohl; Mach uns dein’s Lob’s und Segens voll!”

Jehovah, Father, Son, and Spirit! Oh, spring of blessing, forever flowing! Flow through heart, thought, and life; make us full of thy praise and blessing!

[150] Wheat bread is now used. At a Schwenkfelder house I ate apple-butter, sweet, because made from sweet apples, and seasoned with fennel, of which the taste resembles anise.

[151] It may be observed that I have used Mr. Weiser’s language.

[152] Before public schools were established the Schwenkfelders had a fund for the education of their poorer members.

[153] “Which these ordered back into our fund, to supply the wants of the poor, when we should arrive at Philadelphia.”

[154] It is probable that baptism will be introduced, but only optionally.

[155] Mr. Weiser tells us that a mother whose adult daughter entered the Reformed Church, by baptism, earnestly protested against the performing of the sacrament over her, on the ground that “prayers were had for their child in the meeting-house.”

[156] All Quakers do not teach the inferiority of the written word. Mr. Weiser says, “In general terms it may be said that Caspar Schwenkfeld has been the George Fox of Silesia, or the veritable George Fox, perhaps somewhat educated and sublimated.”

Although some of the doctrines taught by George Fox seem to have been given before him by Schwenkfeld, yet were these not previously taught among the Anabaptists, and possibly among the Waldenses?

It has been said that the better classes of Anabaptists claimed a descent from the Waldenses, the Wickliffites, and the Hussites, who had struggled for a church separated from the world and distinguished by the holiness of its members.

[157] A note says, “No one can deny that at last all books must perish, but the word of the Lord endureth forever.”

[158] On his death-bed Schwenkfeld declared that he believed that all in the Old and New Testament was profitable for salvation to the elect; that he was certain that his own writings, if read impartially, and after prayer, agreed with Holy Scripture, but he must acknowledge to the praise of God that they proceeded more from gracious revelation.

[159] See the _Erläuterung_, or Explanation, chap. x. These passages in general are greatly abbreviated, or are picked out, I may say.

[160] _Erläuterung_, chap. xi.

[161] The passage alluded to is doubtless this: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

[162] The thoughtful reader may perhaps find something in this answer to contrast with these passages from the decrees of the late Ecumenical Council at Rome:

“If any one shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that any one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine, and that such assertions may not be condemned by the church, let him be _anathema_. If any one shall say that at any time it may come to pass, in the progress of science, that the doctrines set forth by the church must be taken in another sense than that in which the church has ever received and yet receives them, let him be _anathema_.” Quoted from a report of a dogmatic decree on Catholic faith, confirmed 1870.

[163] Ausführliche Geschichte Kaspar v. Schwenkfelds, etc.

[164] Kadelbach tells us of George Mattern, a teacher in Silesia, who inclined to the opinions of Schwenkfeld, and who migrated to Holland, and afterward to England, where he joined the Quakers. He wrote a letter with this expression: “Dear father, thou must not be surprised that I thee and thou thee. _Dich. dutze._”

[165] This letter is dated 1875. It was late in 1873 that I heard of baptism as having been administered among them.

[166] I believe the paper is discontinued, 1882.

[167] I received permission to use the name of Mr. Mahony, the manufacturer. His brother wrote “The Bells of Shandon.” The other names used are substitutes.

[168] Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary, County Cork.

[169] One was erected a few years ago at Manchester, and I was told there that the Queen and Prince of Wales had not visited the town since.