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.