History of the
by J. E.
Hutton
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A HISTORY OF THE
BY
J. E. HUTTON,
M.A.
(Second Edition, Revised
and Enlarged.)
1909
CONTENTS.
BOOK
ONE.
The Bohemian Brethren.
1457-1673
" II.--The Burning of Hus. July 6th,
1415
" III.--The Welter.
1415-1434
" IV.--Peter of Chelcic.
1419-1450
" V.--Gregory the Patriarch
and the Society at Kunwald.
1457-1472
" VI.--Luke of
" VII.--The Brethren at
Home.
" VIII.--John Augusta and His
Policy. 1531-1548
" IX.--The Brethren in Poland.
1548-1570
" X.--The Martyr Bishop.
1548-1560
" XI.--The Last Days of Augusta.
1560-1572
" XII.--The Golden Age.
1572-1603
" XIII.--The Letter of Majesty.
1603-1609
" XIV.--The Downfall.
1609-1621
" XV.--The Day of Blood at Prague.
June 21st, 1621
" XVI.--Comenius and the Hidden Seed.
1621-1673
BOOK
TWO.
The Revival under
Zinzendorf. 1700-1760.
CHAPTER I.--The Youth of
Count Zinzendorf. 1700-1722
" II.--Christian David.
1690-1722
" III.--The Founding of Herrnhut.
1722-1727
" IV.--Life at
Herrnhut
" V.--The Edict of Banishment.
1727-1736
" VI.--The Foreign Missions and
their Influence. 1732-1760
" VII.--The Pilgrim Band.
1736-1743
" VIII.--The Sifting Time.
1743-1750
" IX.--Moravians and Methodists.
1735-1742
" X.--Yorkshire and the
Settlement System. 1742-1755
" XI.--The Labours of John Cennick.
1739-1755
" XII.--The Appeal to Parliament.
1742-1749
" XIII.--The Battle of the Books.
1749-1755
" XIV.--The American Experiments.
1734-1762
" XV.--The Last Days of Zinzendorf.
1755-1760
BOOK
THREE.
The Rule of the Germans.
1760-1857.
CHAPTER I.--The Church and
Her Mission; or The Three Constitutional
Synods. 1760-1775
" II.--The Fight for the Gospel; or,
Moravians and
Rationalists.
1775-1800
" III.--A Fall and a Recovery.
1800-1857
" IV.--The British Collapse.
1760-1800
" V.--The British Advance.
1800-1857
" VI.--The Struggle in America.
1762-1857
" VII.--The Separation of the Provinces
1857-1899
BOOK
FOUR.
The Modern Moravians.
1857-1908.
CHAPTER I.--Moravian
Principles
" II.--The Moravians in
Germany
" III.--The Moravians in Great
Britain
" IV.--The Moravians in North
America
" V.--Bonds of
Union
PREFACE.
For assistance in the
preparation of this second edition, I desire
herewith to express my
obligations to several friends:--To the late
Rev. L. G. Hassé, B.D.,
whose knowledge of Moravian history was
profound, and who guided me
safely in many matters of detail; to the
Rev. N. Libbey, M.A.,
Principal of the Moravian Theological College,
Fairfield, for the loan of
valuable books; to the Rev. J. T. Müller,
D.D., Archivist at
Herrnhut, for revising part of the MS., and for
many helpful suggestions;
to Mr. W. T. Waugh, M.A., for assistance
in correcting the
proof-sheets, and for much valuable criticism; to
the members of the Moravian
Governing Board, not only for the loan
of books and documents from
the Fetter Lane archives, but also for
carefully reading through
the MS.; to the ministers who kindly
supplied my pulpit for
three months; and last, but not least, to the
members of my own
congregation, who relieved me from some pastoral
duties to enable me to make
good speed with my task.
MORAVIAN
MANSE,
HECKMONDWIKE.
BOOK
ONE.
The Bohemian
Brethren.
CHAPTER
I
THE RISING
STORM.
When an ordinary
Englishman, in the course of his reading, sees
mention made of Moravians,
he thinks forthwith of a foreign land, a
foreign people and a
foreign Church. He wonders who
these Moravians
may be, and wonders, as a
rule, in vain. We have all heard of
the
Protestant Reformation; we
know its principles and admire its
heroes; and the famous
names of Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Latimer,
Cranmer, Knox and other
great men are familiar in our ears as
household words. But few people in this country are aware
of the
fact that long before
Luther had burned the Pope's bull, and long
before Cranmer died at the
stake, there had begun an earlier
Reformation, and flourished
a Reforming Church. It is to tell
the
story of that Church--the
Church of the Brethren--that this little
book is
written.
For her cradle and her
earliest home we turn to the distressful land
of Bohemia, and the people
called Bohemians, or Czechs. To
us
English readers Bohemia has
many charms. As we call to mind
our
days at school, we
remember, in a dim and hazy way, how famous
Bohemians in days of yore
have played some part in our national
story. We have sung the praises at Christmas
time of the Bohemian
Monarch, "Good King
Wenceslaus." We have read how John,
the blind
King of Bohemia, fell
mortally wounded at the Battle of Crecy, how
he died in the tent of King
Edward III., and how his generous
conqueror exclaimed: "The
crown of chivalry has fallen today; never
was the like of this King
of Bohemia." We have all read, too,
how
Richard II. married
Princess Anne of Bohemia; how the Princess, so
the story goes, brought a
Bohemian Bible to England; how Bohemian
scholars, a few years
later, came to study at Oxford; how there they
read the writings of
Wycliffe, the "Morning Star of the
Reformation"; and how,
finally, copies of Wycliffe's books were
carried to Bohemia, and
there gave rise to a religious revival of
world-wide importance. We have struck the trail of our
journey.
For one person that
Wycliffe stirred in England, he stirred
hundreds in Bohemia. In England his influence was fleeting;
in
Bohemia it was deep and
abiding. In England his followers
were
speedily suppressed by law;
in Bohemia they became a great national
force, and prepared the way
for the foundation of the Church of the
Brethren.
For this startling fact
there was a very powerful reason.
In many
ways the history of Bohemia
is very like the history of Ireland, and
the best way to understand
the character of the people is to think
of our Irish friends as we
know them to-day. They sprang from
the
old Slavonic stock, and the
Slavonic is very like the Keltic in
nature. They had fiery Slavonic blood in their
veins, and Slavonic
hearts beat high with hope
in their bosoms. They had all
the
delightful Slavonic zeal,
the Slavonic dash, the Slavonic
imagination. They were easy to stir, they were swift
in action,
they were witty in speech,
they were mystic and poetic in soul, and,
like the Irish of the
present day, they revelled in the joy of party
politics, and discussed
religious questions with the keenest zest.
With them religion came
first and foremost. All their
poetry was
religious; all their
legends were religious; and thus the message of
Wycliffe fell on hearts
prepared to give it a kindly welcome.
Again, Bohemia, like
Ireland, was the home of two rival populations.
The one was the native
Czech, the other was the intruding German;
and the two had not yet
learned to love each other. From
all sides
except one these German
invaders had come. If the reader
will
consult a map of Europe he
will see that, except on the south-east
frontier, where the sister
country, Moravia, lies, Bohemia is
surrounded by
German-speaking States. On the
north-east is Silesia,
on the north-west Saxony,
on the west Bavaria and the Upper
Palatinate, and thus
Bohemia was flooded with Germans from three
sides at once. For years these Germans had been
increasing in
power, and the whole early
history of Bohemia is one dreary
succession of bloody wars
against German Emperors and Kings.
Sometimes the land had been
ravaged by German soldiers, sometimes a
German King had sat on the
Bohemian throne. But now the
German
settlers in Bohemia had
become more powerful than ever.
They had
settled in large numbers in
the city of Prague, and had there
obtained special privileges
for themselves. They had
introduced
hundreds of German
clergymen, who preached in the German language.
They had married their
daughters into noble Bohemian families.
They had tried to make
German the language of the court, had spoken
with contempt of the
Bohemian language, and had said that it was
only fit for slaves. They had introduced German laws into
many a
town, and German customs
into family life; and, worse than all, they
had overwhelming power in
that pride of the country, the University
of Prague. For these Germans the hatred of the
people was intense.
"It is better," said one of
their popular writers, "for the land to
be a desert than to be held
by Germans; it is better to marry a
Bohemian peasant girl than
to marry a German queen." And
Judas
Iscariot himself, said a
popular poet, was in all probability a
German.
Again, as in Ireland, these
national feuds were mixed up with
religious differences. The seeds of future strife were early
sown.
Christianity came from two
opposite sources. On the one hand,
two
preachers, Cyril and
Methodius, had come from the Greek Church in
Constantinople, had
received the blessing of the Pope, and had
preached to the people in
the Bohemian language; on the other, the
German Archbishop of
Salzburg had brought in hosts of German
priests, and had tried in
vain to persuade the Pope to condemn the
two preachers as
heretics. And the people loved the
Bohemian
preachers, and hated the
German priests. The old feud was
raging
still. If the preacher spoke in German, he was
hated; if he spoke
in Bohemian, he was
beloved; and Gregory VII. had made matters worse
by forbidding preaching in
the language of the people.
The result can be
imagined. It is admitted now by
all
historians--Catholic and
Protestant alike--that about the time when
our story opens the Church
in Bohemia had lost her hold upon the
affections of the
people. It is admitted that sermons
the people
could understand were
rare. It is admitted that the Bible
was known
to few, that the services
held in the parish churches had become
mere senseless shows, and
that most of the clergy never preached at
all. No longer were the clergy examples to
their flocks.
They
hunted, they gambled, they
caroused, they committed adultery, and
the suggestion was actually
solemnly made that they should be
provided with
concubines.
For some years a number of
pious teachers had made gallant but vain
attempts to cleanse the
stables. The first was Conrad
of
Waldhausen, an Augustinian
Friar (1364-9). As this man was a
German
and spoke in German, it is
not likely that he had much effect on the
common people, but he
created quite a sensation in Prague, denounced
alike the vices of the
clergy and the idle habits of the rich,
persuaded the ladies of
high degree to give up their fine dresses
and jewels, and even caused
certain well-known sinners to come and
do penance in
public.
The next was Milic of
Kremsir (1363-74). He was a
Bohemian, and
preached in the Bohemian
language. His whole life was one of
noble
self-sacrifice. For the sake of the poor he renounced
his position
as Canon, and devoted
himself entirely to good works. He
rescued
thousands of fallen women,
and built them a number of homes.
He was
so disgusted with the evils
of his days that he thought the end of
the world was close at
hand, declared that the Emperor, Charles IV.,
was Anti-Christ, went to
Rome to expound his views to the Pope, and
posted up a notice on the
door of St. Peter's, declaring that
Anti-Christ had
come.
The next was that beautiful
writer, Thomas of Stitny (1370-1401).
He exalted the Holy
Scriptures as the standard of faith, wrote
several beautiful
devotional books, and denounced the immorality of
the monks. "They have
fallen away from love," he said; "they have
not the peace of God in
their hearts; they quarrel, condemn and
fight each other; they have
forsaken God for money."
In some ways these three
Reformers were all alike. They were
all
men of lofty character;
they all attacked the vices of the clergy
and the luxury of the rich;
and they were all loyal to the Church of
Rome, and looked to the
Pope to carry out the needed reform.
But the next Reformer,
Matthew of Janow, carried the movement
further (1381-93). The cause was the famous schism in the
Papacy.
For the long period of
nearly forty years (1378-1415) the whole
Catholic world was shocked
by the scandal of two, and sometimes
three, rival Popes, who
spent their time abusing and fighting each
other. As long as this schism lasted it was
hard for men to look up
to the Pope as a true
spiritual guide. How could men call
the Pope
the Head of the Church when
no one knew which was the true Pope?
How could men respect the
Popes when some of the Popes were men of
bad moral character? Pope Urban VI. was a ferocious brute,
who had
five of his enemies
secretly murdered; Pope Clement VII., his clever
rival, was a scheming
politician; and Pope John XXIII. was a man
whose character will
scarcely bear describing in print.
Of all the
scandals in the Catholic
Church, this disgraceful quarrel between
rival Popes did most to
upset the minds of good men and to prepare
the way for the
Reformation. It aroused the scorn
of John Wycliffe
in England, and of Matthew
of Janow in Bohemia. "This schism," he
wrote, "has not arisen
because the priests loved Jesus Christ and
His Church, but rather
because they loved themselves and the world."
But Matthew went even
further than this. As he did not
attack any
Catholic dogma--except the
worship of pictures and images--it has
been contended by some
writers that he was not so very radical in
his views after all; but
the whole tone of his writings shows that
he had lost his confidence
in the Catholic Church, and desired to
revive the simple
Christianity of Christ and the Apostles. "I
consider it essential," he
wrote, "to root out all weeds, to restore
the word of God on earth,
to bring back the Church of Christ to its
original, healthy,
condensed condition, and to keep only such
regulations as date from
the time of the Apostles." "All the works
of men," he added, "their
ceremonies and traditions, shall soon be
totally destroyed; the Lord
Jesus shall alone be exalted, and His
Word shall stand for
ever." Back to Christ! Back to the
Apostles!
Such was the message of
Matthew of Janow.
At this point, when the
minds of men were stirred, the writings of
Wycliffe were brought to
Bohemia, and added fuel to the fire.
He
had asserted that the Pope
was capable of committing a sin. He
had
declared that the Pope was
not to be obeyed unless his commands were
in accordance with
Scripture, and thus had placed the authority of
the Bible above the
authority of the Pope. He had attacked the
Doctrine of
Transubstantiation, and had thus denied the power of the
priests "to make the Body
of Christ." Above all, in his
volume, "De
Ecclesia," he had denounced
the whole Catholic sacerdotal system,
and had laid down the
Protestant doctrine that men could come into
contact with God without
the aid of priests. Thus step by
step the
way was prepared for the
coming revolution in Bohemia. There
was
strong patriotic national
feeling; there was hatred of the German
priests; there was a
growing love for the Bible; there was lack of
respect for the immoral
clergy, and lack of belief in the Popes;
there was a vague desire to
return to Primitive Christianity; and
all that was needed now was
a man to gather these straggling beams
together, and focus them
all in one white burning light.
CHAPTER
II.
THE BURNING OF
HUS.
On Saturday, July 6th,
1415, there was great excitement in the city
of Constance. For the last half-year the city had
presented a
brilliant and gorgeous
scene. The great Catholic Council
of
Constance had met at
last. From all parts of the Western
World
distinguished men had
come. The streets were a blaze of
colour.
The Cardinals rode by in
their scarlet hats; the monks in their
cowls were telling their
beads; the revellers sipped their wine and
sang; and the rumbling
carts from the country-side bore bottles of
wine, cheeses, butter,
honey, venison, cakes and fine confections.
King Sigismund was there in
all his pride, his flaxen hair falling
in curls about his
shoulders; there were a thousand Bishops, over
two thousand Doctors and
Masters, about two thousand Counts, Barons
and Knights, vast hosts of
Dukes, Princes and Ambassadors--in all
over 50,000
strangers.
And now, after months of
hot debate, the Council met in the great
Cathedral to settle once
for all the question, What to do with John
Hus? King Sigismund sat on the throne,
Princes flanking him on
either side. In the middle of the Cathedral floor was
a scaffold;
on the scaffold a table and
a block of wood; on the block of wood
some priestly robes. The Mass was said. John Hus was led in. He
mounted the scaffold. He breathed a prayer. The awful
proceedings
began.
But why was John Hus
there? What had he done to offend
both Pope
and Emperor? For the last twelve years John Hus had
been the
boldest reformer, the
finest preacher, the most fiery patriot, the
most powerful writer, and
the most popular hero in Bohemia.
At
first he was nothing more
than a child of his times. He was
born on
July 6th, 1369, in a humble
cottage at Husinec, in South Bohemia;
earned coppers in his
youth, like Luther, by chanting hymns; studied
at Prague University; and
entered the ministry, not because he
wanted to do good, but
because he wanted to enjoy a comfortable
living. He began, of course, as an orthodox
Catholic. He
was
Rector first of Prague
University, and then of the Bethlehem Chapel,
which had been built by
John of Milheim for services in the Bohemian
language. For some years he confined himself
almost entirely, like
Milic and Stitny before
him, to preaching of an almost purely moral
character. He attacked the sins and vices of all
classes; he spoke
in the Bohemian language,
and the Bethlehem Chapel was packed.
He
began by attacking the
vices of the idle rich. A noble
lady
complained to the King. The
King told the Archbishop of Prague that
he must warn Hus to be more
cautious in his language.
"No, your Majesty," replied
the Archbishop, "Hus is bound by his
ordination oath to speak
the truth without respect of persons."
John Hus went on to attack
the vices of the clergy. The
Archbishop
now complained to the King.
He admitted that the clergy were in need
of improvement, but he
thought that Hus's language was rash, and
would do more harm than
good. "Nay," said the King, "that will not
do. Hus is bound by his ordination oath to
speak the truth without
respect of
persons."
And Hus continued his
attacks. His preaching had two
results. It
fanned the people's desire
for reform, and it taught them to despise
the clergy more than
ever.
At the same time, when
opportunity offered, John Hus made a practice
of preaching on the burning
topics of the day; and the most popular
topic then was the detested
power of Germans in Bohemia.
German
soldiers ravaged the land;
German nobles held offices of state; and
German scholars, in Prague
University, had three-fourths of the
voting power. The Bohemian people were furious. John Hus fanned
the flame. "We Bohemians,"
he declared in a fiery sermon, "are more
wretched than dogs or
snakes. A dog defends the couch on
which he
lies. If another dog tries to drive him off,
he fights him.
A
snake does the same. But us the Germans oppress. They seize the
offices of state, and we
are dumb. In France the French
are
foremost. In Germany the Germans are
foremost. What use would
a
Bohemian bishop or priest,
who did not know the German language, be
in Germany? He would be as useful as a dumb dog, who
cannot bark,
to a flock of sheep. Of exactly the same use are German
priests to
us. It is against the law of God! I pronounce it illegal." At
last a regulation was made
by King Wenceslaus that the Bohemians
should be more fairly
represented at Prague University.
They had
now three votes out of
four. John Hus was credited by the
people
with bringing about the
change. He became more popular than
ever.
If Hus had only halted
here, it is probable that he would have been
allowed to die in peace in
his bed in a good old age, and his name
would be found enrolled
to-day in the long list of Catholic saints.
However wicked the clergy
may have been, they could hardly call a
man a heretic for telling
them plainly about the blots in their
lives. But Hus soon stepped outside these
narrow bounds. The
more
closely he studied the
works of Wycliffe, the more convinced he
became that, on the whole,
the great English Reformer was right; and
before long, in the boldest
possible way, he began to preach
Wycliffe's doctrines in his
sermons, and to publish them in his
books. He knew precisely what he was
doing. He knew
that
Wycliffe's doctrines had
been condemned by the English Church
Council at
Black-Friars. He knew that these
very same doctrines had
been condemned at a meeting
of the Prague University Masters.
He
knew that no fewer than two
hundred volumes of Wycliffe's works had
been publicly burned at
Prague, in the courtyard of the Archbishop's
Palace. He knew, in a word, that Wycliffe was
regarded as a
heretic; and yet he
deliberately defended Wycliffe's teaching.
It
is this that justifies us
in calling him a Protestant, and this that
caused the Catholics to
call him a heretic.
John Hus, moreover, knew
what the end would be. If he stood
to his
guns they would burn him,
and burned he longed to be.
The
Archbishop forbade him to
preach in the Bethlehem Chapel.
John Hus,
defiant, went on
preaching. At one service he
actually read to the
people a letter he had
received from Richard Wyche, one of
Wycliffe's followers. As the years rolled on he became
more
"heterodox" than ever. At this period there were still two
rival
Popes, and the great
question arose in Bohemia which Pope the clergy
there were to
recognise. John Hus refused to
recognise either.
At
last one of the rival
Popes, the immoral John XXIII., sent a number
of preachers to Prague on a
very remarkable errand. He wanted
money
to raise an army to go to
war with the King of Naples; the King of
Naples had supported the
other Pope, Gregory XII., and now Pope John
sent his preachers to
Prague to sell indulgences at popular prices.
They entered the city
preceded by drummers, and posted themselves
in the market place. They had a curious message to
deliver. If
the
good people, said they,
would buy these indulgences, they would be
doing two good things: they
would obtain the full forgiveness of
their sins, and support the
one lawful Pope in his holy campaign.
John Hus was hot with
anger. What vulgar traffic in holy
things
was this? He believed neither in Pope John nor in
his indulgences.
"Let who will," he
thundered, "proclaim the contrary; let the Pope,
or a Bishop, or a Priest
say, 'I forgive thee thy sins; I free thee
from the pains of Hell.' It
is all vain, and helps thee nothing.
God alone, I repeat, can
forgive sins through Christ."
The excitement in Prague
was furious. From this moment
onwards Hus
became the leader of a
national religious movement. The
preachers
went on selling indulgences
{1409.}. At one and the same time,
in
three different churches,
three young artisans sang out: "Priest,
thou liest! The indulgences are a fraud." For this crime the
three
young men were beheaded in
a corner near Green Street.
Fond
women--sentimental, as
usual--dipped their handkerchiefs in the
blood of the martyrs, and a
noble lady spread fine linen over their
corpses. The University students picked up the
gauntlet.
They
seized the bodies of the
three young men, and carried them to be
buried in the Bethlehem
Chapel. At the head of the
procession was
Hus himself, and Hus
conducted the funeral. The whole
city was in
an
uproar.
As the life of Hus was now
in danger, and his presence in the city
might lead to riots, he
retired for a while from Prague to the
castle of Kradonec, in the
country; and there, besides preaching to
vast crowds in the fields,
he wrote the two books which did the most
to bring him to the
stake. The first was his treatise
"On Traffic
in Holy Things"; the second
his great, elaborate work, "The
Church."1 In the first he denounced the sale of
indulgences, and
declared that even the Pope
himself could be guilty of the sin of
simony. In the second, following Wycliffe's
lead, he criticised the
whole orthodox conception
of the day of the "Holy Catholic Church."
What was, asked Hus, the
true Church of Christ? According to
the
popular ideas of the day,
the true Church of Christ was a visible
body of men on this
earth. Its head was the Pope; its
officers were
the cardinals, the bishops,
the priests, and other ecclesiastics;
and its members were those
who had been baptized and who kept true
to the orthodox faith. The idea of Hus was different. His
conception of the nature of
the true Church was very similar to that
held by many
Non-conformists of to-day. He was a
great believer in
predestination. All men, he said, from Adam onwards,
were divided
into two classes: first,
those predestined by God to eternal bliss;
second, those fore-doomed
to eternal damnation. The true
Church of
Christ consisted of those
predestined to eternal bliss, and no one
but God Himself knew to
which class any man belonged. From
this
position a remarkable
consequence followed. For anything
the Pope
knew to the contrary, he
might belong himself to the number of the
damned. He could not, therefore, be the true
Head of the Church; he
could not be the Vicar of
Christ; and the only Head of the Church
was Christ Himself. The same argument applied to Cardinals,
Bishops
and Priests. For anything he knew to the contrary,
any Cardinal,
Bishop or Priest in the
Church might belong to the number of the
damned; he might be a
servant, not of Christ, but of Anti-Christ;
and, therefore, said Hus,
it was utterly absurd to look to men of
such doubtful character as
infallible spiritual guides. What
right,
asked Hus, had the Pope to
claim the "power of the keys?"
What
right had the Pope to say
who might be admitted to the Church?
He
had no right, as Pope, at
all. Some of the Popes were
heretics;
some of the clergy were
villains, foredoomed to torment in Hell;
and, therefore, all in
search of the truth must turn, not to the
Pope and the clergy, but to
the Bible and the law of Christ.
God
alone had the power of the
keys; God alone must be obeyed; and the
Holy Catholic Church
consisted, not of the Pope, the Cardinals, the
Priests, and so many
baptized members, but "of all those that had
been chosen by God." It is
hard to imagine a doctrine more
Protestant than this. It struck at the root of the whole
Papal
conception. It undermined the authority of the
Catholic Church, and
no one could say to what,
ere long, it might lead. It was
time,
said many, to take decisive
action.
For this purpose Sigismund,
King of the Romans and of Hungary,
persuaded Pope John XXIII.
to summon a general Church Council at
Constance; and at the same
time he invited Hus to attend the Council
in person, and there
expound his views. John Hus set out
for
Constance. As soon as he arrived in the city, he
received from
Sigismund that famous
letter of "safe conduct" on which whole
volumes have been
written. The King's promise was as
clear as day.
He promised Hus, in the
plainest terms, three things: first, that
he should come unharmed to
the city; second, that he should have a
free hearing; and third,
that if he did not submit to the decision
of the Council he should be
allowed to go home. Of those
promises
only the first was ever
fulfilled. John Hus soon found
himself
caught in a trap. He was imprisoned by order of the Pope.
He was
placed in a dungeon on an
island in the Rhine, and lay next to a
sewer; and Sigismund either
would not or could not lift a finger to
help him. For three and a-half mouths he lay in
his dungeon; and
then he was removed to the
draughty tower of a castle on Lake
Geneva. His opinions were examined and condemned
by the Council;
and at last, when he was
called to appear in person, he found that
he had been condemned as a
heretic already. As soon as he
opened
his month to speak he was
interrupted; and when he closed it they
roared, "He has admitted
his guilt." He had one chance of
life, and
one chance only. He must recant his heretical Wycliffite
opinions,
especially those set forth
in his treatise on the "Church."
What
need, said the Council,
could there be of any further trial?
The
man was a heretic. His own books convicted him, and justice
must be
done.
And now, on the last day of
the trial, John Hus stood before the
great Council. The scene was appalling. For some weeks
this
gallant son of the morning
had been tormented by neuralgia.
The
marks of suffering were on
his brow. His face was pale; his
cheeks
were sunken; his limbs were
weak and trembling. But his eye
flashed
with a holy fire, and his
words rang clear and true. Around
him
gleamed the purple and gold
and the scarlet robes. Before him
sat
King Sigismund on the
throne. The two men looked each
other in the
face. As the articles were rapidly read out
against him, John Hus
endeavoured to speak in his
own defence. He was told to hold
his
tongue. Let him answer the charges all at once
at the close.
"How can I do that," said
Hus, "when I cannot even bear them all in
mind?"
He made another
attempt.
"Hold your tongue," said
Cardinal Zabarella; "we have already given
you a sufficient
hearing."
With clasped hands, and in
ringing tones, Hus begged in vain for a
hearing. Again he was told to hold his peace, and
silently he
raised his eyes to heaven
in prayer. He was accused of
denying the
Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation. He sprang to
his feet in
anger. Zabarella tried to shout him down. The voice of Hus
rang
out above the
babel.
"I have never held, taught
or preached," he cried, "that in the
sacrament of the altar
material bread remains after consecration."
The trial was short and
sharp. The verdict had been
given
beforehand. He was now accused of another horrible
crime. He had
actually described himself
as the fourth person in the Godhead!
The
charge was
monstrous.
"Let that doctor be named,"
said Hus, "who has given this evidence
against
me."
But the name of his false
accuser was never given. He was
now
accused of a still more
dangerous error. He had appealed to
God
instead of appealing to the
Church.
"O Lord God," he exclaimed,
"this Council now condemns Thy action
and law as an error! I affirm that there is no safer appeal
than
that to the Lord Jesus
Christ."
With those brave words he
signed his own death warrant. For
all his
orthodoxy on certain
points, he made it clearer now than ever that
he set the authority of his
own conscience above the authority of
the Council; and,
therefore, according to the standard of the day,
he had to be treated as a
heretic.
"Moreover," he said, with
his eye on the King, "I came here freely
to this Council, with a
safe-conduct from my Lord the King here
present, with the desire to
prove my innocence and to explain my
beliefs."
At those words, said the
story in later years, King Sigismund
blushed. If he did, the blush is the most famous
in the annals of
history; if he did not,
some think he ought to have done.
For Hus
the last ordeal had now
arrived; and the Bishop of Concordia, in
solemn tones, read out the
dreadful articles of condemnation.
For
heretics the Church had
then but little mercy. His books
were all
to be burned; his priestly
office must be taken from him; and he
himself, expelled from the
Church, must be handed over to the civil
power. In vain, with a last appeal for justice,
he protested that
he had never been obstinate
in error. In vain he contended that
his
proud accusers had not even
taken the trouble to read some of his
books. As the sentence against himself was
read, and the vision of
death rose up before him,
he fell once more on his knees and prayed,
not for himself, but for
his enemies.
"Lord Jesus Christ," he
said, "pardon all my enemies, I pray thee,
for the sake of Thy great
mercy! Thou knowest that they
have
falsely accused me, brought
forward false witnesses and false
articles against me. O! pardon them for Thine infinite
mercies'
sake."
At this beautiful prayer
the priests and bishops jeered. He
was
ordered now to mount the
scaffold, to put on the priestly garments,
and to recant his heretical
opinions. The first two commands
he
obeyed; the third he
treated with scorn. As he drew the
alb over
his shoulders, he appealed
once more to Christ.
"My Lord Jesus Christ," he
said, "was mocked in a white robe, when
led from Herod to
Pilate."
There on the scaffold he
stood, with his long white robe upon him
and the Communion Cup in
his hand; and there, in immortal burning
words, he refused to recant
a single word that he had written.
"Behold," he cried, "these
Bishops demand that I recant and abjure.
I dare not do it. If I did, I should be false to God, and
sin
against my conscience and
Divine truth."
The Bishops were
furious. They swarmed around
him. They
snatched
the Cup from his
hand.
"Thou cursed Judas!" they
roared. "Thou hast forsaken the council of
peace. Thou hast become one of the Jews. We
take from thee this Cup
of
Salvation."
"But I trust," replied Hus,
"in God Almighty, and shall drink this
Cup this day in His
Kingdom."
The ceremony of degradation
now took place. As soon as his
robes
had been taken from him,
the Bishops began a hot discussion about
the proper way of cutting
his hair. Some clamoured for a
razor,
others were all for
scissors.
"See," said Hus to the
King, "these Bishops cannot agree in their
blasphemy."
At last the scissors won
the victory. His tonsure was cut in
four
directions, and a fool's
cap, a yard high, with a picture of devils
tearing his soul, was
placed upon that hero's head.
"So," said the Bishops, "we
deliver your soul to the devil."
"Most joyfully," said Hus,
"will I wear this crown of shame for thy
sake, O Jesus! who for me
didst wear a crown of thorns."
"Go, take him," said the
King. And Hus was led to his death.
As he
passed along he saw the
bonfire in which his books were being
burned. He smiled. Along the streets of the city he strode,
with
fetters clanking on his
feet, a thousand soldiers for his escort,
and crowds of admirers
surging on every hand. Full soon
the fatal
spot was reached. It was a quiet meadow among the gardens,
outside
the city gates. At the stake he knelt once more in
prayer, and the
fool's cap fell from his
head. Again he smiled. It ought to be
burned along with him, said
a watcher, that he and the devils might
be together. He was bound to the stake with seven
moist thongs and
an old rusty chain, and
faggots of wood and straw were piled round
him to the chin. For the last time the Marshal approached
to give
him a fair chance of
abjuring.
"What errors," he retorted,
"shall I renounce? I know myself
guilty
of none. I call God to witness that all that I
have written and
preached has been with the
view of rescuing souls from sin and
perdition, and therefore
most joyfully will I confirm with my blood
the truth I have written
and preached."
As the flame arose and the
wood crackled, he chanted the Catholic
burial prayer, "Jesu, Son
of David, have mercy upon me." From
the
west a gentle breeze was
blowing, and a gust dashed the smoke and
sparks in his face. At the words "Who was born of the Virgin
Mary"
he ceased; his lips moved
faintly in silent prayer; and a few
moments later the martyr
breathed no more. At last the cruel
fire
died down, and the soldiers
wrenched his remains from the post,
hacked his skull in pieces,
and ground his bones to powder. As
they
prodded about among the
glowing embers to see how much of Hus was
left, they found, to their
surprise, that his heart was still
unburned. One fixed it on the point of his spear,
thrust it back
into the fire, and watched
it frizzle away; and finally, by the
Marshal's orders, they
gathered all the ashes together, and tossed
them into the
Rhine.
He had died, says a
Catholic writer, for the noblest of all causes.
He had died for the faith
which he believed to be true.
CHAPTER
III.
THE WELTER,
1415-1434.
The excitement in Bohemia
was intense. As the ashes of Hus
floated
down the Rhine, the news of
his death spread over the civilized
world, and in every
Bohemian town and hamlet the people felt that
their greatest man had been
unjustly murdered. He had become
the
national hero and the
national saint, and now the people swore to
avenge his death. A Hussite League was formed by his
followers, a
Catholic League was formed
by his enemies. The Hussite Wars
began.
It is important to note
with exactness what took place. As
we
study the history of men
and nations, we are apt to fancy that the
rank and file of a country
can easily be united in one by common
adherence to a common
cause. It is not so. For one man who
will
steadily follow a
principle, there are hundreds who would rather
follow a leader. As long as Hus was alive in the flesh,
he was able
to command the loyalty of
the people; but now that his tongue was
silent for ever, his
followers split into many contending factions.
For all his eloquence he
had never been able to strike one clear
commanding note. In some of his views he was a Catholic,
in others
a Protestant. To some he was merely the fiery patriot,
to others
the champion of Church
Reform, to others the high-souled moral
teacher, to others the
enemy of the Pope. If the people had only
been united they might now
have gained their long-lost freedom.
But
unity was the very quality
they lacked the most. They had no
clear
notion of what they wanted;
they had no definite scheme of church
reform; they had no great
leader to show them the way through the
jungle, and thus, instead
of closing their ranks against the common
foe, they split up into
jangling sects and parties, and made the
confusion worse
confounded.
First in rank and first in
power came the Utraquists or Calixtines.2
For some reason these men
laid all the stress on a doctrine taught
by Hus in his later
years. As he lay in his gloomy
dungeon near
Constance, he had written
letters contending that laymen should be
permitted to take the wine
at the Communion. For this doctrine
the
Utraquists now fought tooth
and nail. They emblazoned the Cup
on
their banners. They were the aristocrats of the
movement; they were
led by the University dons;
they were political rather than
religious in their aims;
they regarded Hus as a patriot; and, on the
whole, they did not care
much for moral and spiritual reforms.
Next came the Taborites,
the red-hot Radicals, with Socialist ideas
of property and loose
ideals of morals. They built
themselves a
fort on Mount Tabor, and
held great open-air meetings.
They
rejected purgatory, masses
and the worship of saints.
They
condemned incense, images,
bells, relics and fasting. They
declared
that priests were an
unnecessary nuisance. They
celebrated the Holy
Communion in barns, and
baptized their babies in ponds and brooks.
They held that every man
had the right to his own interpretation of
the Bible; they despised
learning and art; and they revelled in
pulling churches down and
burning monks to death.
Next came the Chiliasts,
who fondly believed that the end of all
things was at hand, that
the millennial reign of Christ would soon
begin, and that all the
righteous--that is, they themselves--would
have to hold the world at
bay in Five Cities of Refuge. For
some
years these mad fanatics
regarded themselves as the chosen
instruments of the Divine
displeasure, and only awaited a signal
from heaven to commence a
general massacre of their fellow men.
As
that signal never came,
however, they were grievously disappointed.
Next in folly came the
Adamites, so called because, in shameless
wise, they dressed like
Adam and Eve before the fall. They
made
their head-quarters on an
island on the River Nesarka, and survived
even after Ziska had
destroyed their camp.
But of all the heretical
bodies in Bohemia the most influential were
the Waldenses. As the history of the Waldenses is still
obscure, we
cannot say for certain what
views they held when they first came
from Italy some fifty or
sixty years before. At first they
seem to
have been almost Catholics,
but as the Hussite Wars went on they
fell, it is said, under the
influence of the Taborites, and adopted
many radical Taborite
opinions. They held that prayer
should be
addressed, not to the
Virgin Mary and the Saints, but to God alone,
and spoke with scorn of the
popular doctrine that the Virgin in
heaven showed her breast
when interceding for sinners. As
they did
not wish to create a
disturbance, they attended the public services
of the Church of Rome; but
they did not believe in those services
themselves, and are said to
have employed their time at Church in
picking holes in the logic
of the speaker. They believed
neither in
building churches, nor in
saying masses, nor in the adoration of
pictures, nor in the
singing of hymns at public worship.
For all
practical intents and
purposes they rejected entirely the orthodox
Catholic distinction
between things secular and things sacred, and
held that a man could
worship God just as well in a field as in a
church, and that it did not
matter in the least whether a man's body
was buried in consecrated
or unconsecrated ground. What use,
they
asked, were holy water,
holy oil, holy palms, roots, crosses, holy
splinters from the Cross of
Christ? They rejected the doctrine
of
purgatory, and said that
all men must go either to heaven or to
hell. They rejected the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, and said
that the wine and bread
remained wine and bread. For us,
however,
the chief point of interest
lies in the attitude they adopted
towards the priests of the
Church of Rome. At that time there was
spread all over Europe a
legend that the Emperor, Constantine the
Great, had made a so-called
"Donation" to Pope Sylvester; and the
Waldenses held that the
Church of Rome, by thus consenting to be
endowed by the State, had
become morally corrupt, and no longer
possessed the keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven. For this reason
they
utterly despised the Roman
priests; and contended that, being
worldly men of bad
character, they were qualified neither to
administer the sacraments
nor to hear confessions. At this
point we
lay our finger on the
principle which led to the foundation of the
Moravian Church. What ideal, we ask, did the Waldenses
now set
before them? We can answer the question in a
sentence. The
whole
object the Waldenses had
now in view was to return to the simple
teaching of Christ and the
Apostles. They wished to revive
what
they regarded as true
primitive Christianity. For this
reason they
brushed aside with scorn
the bulls of Popes and the decrees of
Councils, and appealed to
the command of the New Testament
Scriptures. For them the law of Christ was supreme
and final; and,
appealing to His teaching
in the Sermon on the Mount, they declared
that oaths were wicked, and
that war was no better than murder.
If
the law of Christ were
obeyed, said they, what need would there be
of government? How long they had held these views we do
not know.
Some think they had held
them for centuries; some think they had
learned them recently from
the Taborites. If scholars insist
on
this latter view, we are
forced back on the further question: Where
did the Taborites get their
advanced opinions? If the
Taborites
taught the Waldenses, who
taught the Taborites? We do not
know.
For the present all we call
say is that the Waldenses in a quiet
way were fast becoming a
mighty force in the country.
They
addressed each other as
brother and sister; they are said to have
had their own translations
of the Bible; they claimed a descent from
the Apostles; and they are
even held by some (though here we tread
on very thin ice) to have
possessed their own episcopal succession.
But the method of the
Taborites was different. If the
Kingdom of
God was to come at all, it
must come, they held, by force, by fire,
by the sword, by pillage
and by famine. What need to tell
here the
blood-curdling story of the
Hussite Wars? What need to tell
here
how Pope Martin V. summoned
the whole Catholic world to a grand
crusade against the
Bohemian people? What need to tell
how the
people of Prague attacked
the Town Hall, and pitched the burgomaster
and several aldermen out of
the windows? For twenty years the
whole
land was one boiling welter
of confusion; and John Ziska, the famous
blind general, took the
lead of the Taborite army, and, standing on
a wagon, with the banner
above him emblazoned with the Hussite Cup,
he swept the country from
end to end like a devouring prairie fire.
It is held now by military
experts that Ziska was the greatest
military genius of the
age. If military genius could have
saved
Bohemia, Bohemia would now
have been saved. For some years
he
managed to hold at bay the
finest chivalry of Europe; and he
certainly saved the Hussite
cause from being crushed in its birth.
For faith and freedom he
fought--the faith of Hus and the freedom
of Bohemia. He formed the rough Bohemian peasantry
into a
disciplined army. He armed his men with lances,
slings,
iron-pointed flails and
clubs. He formed his barricades
of
iron-clad wagons, and
whirled them in murderous mazes round the
field. He made a special study of gunpowder,
and taught his men the
art of shooting
straight. He has often been
compared to Oliver
Cromwell, and like our
Oliver he was in many ways. He was
stern in
dealing with his enemies,
and once had fifty Adamites burned to
death. He was sure that God was on his side in
the war. "Be it
known," he wrote to his
supporters, "that we are collecting men from
all parts of the country
against these enemies of God and
devastators of our Bohemian
land." He composed a stirring
battle
song, and taught his men to
sing it in chorus when they marched to
meet the
foe.
Therefore, manfully cry
out:
"At them! rush at
them."
Wield bravely your
arms!
Pray to your Lord
God.
Strike and kill! spare
none!
What a combination of piety
and fury! It was all in vain. The
great general died of a
fever. The thunderbolt fell. At a meeting
in Prague the Utraquists
and Catholics at last came to terms, and
drew up a compromise known
as the "Compactata of Basle" (1433).
For
nearly two hundred years
after this these "Compactata" were regarded
as the law of the land; and
the Utraquist Church was recognised by
the Pope as the national
self-governing Church of Bohemia.
The
terms of the Compactata
were four in number. The Communion
was to
be given to laymen in both
kinds; all mortal sins were to be
punished by the proper
authorities; the Word of God was to be freely
preached by faithful
priests and deacons; and no priests were to
have any worldly
possessions. For practical purposes
this agreement
meant the defeat of the
advanced reforming movement. One
point the
Utraquists had gained, and
one alone; they were allowed to take the
wine at the Communion. For the rest these Utraquist followers
of
Hus were as Catholic as the
Pope himself. They adored the
Host,
read the masses, kept the
fasts, and said the prayers as their
fathers had done before
them. From that moment the fate of
the
Taborite party was
sealed. At the battle of Lipan they
were
defeated, routed, crushed
out of existence. {1434}. The
battle
became a massacre. The slaughter continued all the night
and part
of the following day, and
hundreds were burned to death in their
huts.
Was this to be the end of
Hus's strivings? What was it in Hus
that
was destined to
survive? What was it that worked
like a silent
leaven amid the clamours of
war? We shall see. Amid these charred
and smoking ruins the
Moravian Church arose.
CHAPTER
IV.
PETER OF CHELCIC,
1419-1450.
Meanwhile a mighty prophet
had arisen, with a clear and startling
message. His name was Peter, and he lived down
south, in the little
village of Chelcic.3 As the historian rummages among the
ancient
records, he discovers to
his sorrow that scarcely anything is known
of the life of this great
man; but, on the other hand, it is a joy
to know that while his
story is wrapped in mystery, his teaching has
been preserved, and that
some of the wonderful books he wrote are
treasured still in his
native land as gems of Bohemian literature.
In later years it was
commonly said that he began life as a
cobbler; but that story, at
least, may be dismissed as a legend.
He
enlisted, we are told, in
the army. He then discovered that
a
soldier's life was wicked;
he then thought of entering a monastery,
but was shocked by what he
heard of the immoralities committed
within the holy walls; and
finally, having some means of his own,
retired to his little
estate at Chelcic, and spent his time in
writing pamphlets about the
troubles of his country. He had
picked
up a smattering of
education in Prague. He had studied
the writings
of Wycliffe and of Hus, and
often appealed to Wycliffe in his works.
He could quote, when he
liked, from the great Church Fathers.
He
had a fair working
knowledge of the Bible; and, above all, he had
the teaching of Christ and
the Apostles engraved upon his conscience
and his heart. As he was not a priest, he could afford
to be
independent; as he knew but
little Latin, he wrote in Bohemian; and
thus, like Stitny and Hus
before him, he appealed to the people in
language they could all
understand. Of all the leaders of
men in
Bohemia, this Peter was the
most original and daring. As
he
pondered on the woes of his
native land, he came to the firm but sad
conclusion that the whole
system of religion and politics was rotten
to the core. Not one of the jangling sects was in the
right. Not
one was true to the spirit
of Christ. Not one was free from
the
dark red stain of
murder. His chief works were his
Net of Faith,
his Reply to Nicholas of
Pilgram, his Reply to Rockycana, his Image
of the Beast, his
theological treatise On the Body of Christ, his
tract The Foundation of
Worldly Laws, his devotional commentary,
Exposition of the Passion
according to St. John, and, last, though
not least, his volume of
discourses on the Gospel lessons for the
year, entitled
Postillia. Of these works the most
famous was his
masterly Net of Faith. He explained the title himself. "Through
His
disciples," said Peter,
"Christ caught the world in the net of His
faith, but the bigger
fishes, breaking the net, escaped.
Then
others followed through
these same holes made by the big fishes, and
the net was left almost
empty." His meaning was clear to
all. The
net was the true Church of
Christ; the two whales who broke it were
the Emperor and the Pope;
the big fishes were the mighty "learned
persons, heretics and
offenders"; and the little fishes were the
true followers of
Christ.
He opened his bold campaign
in dramatic style. When John Ziska
and
Nicholas of Husinec
declared at Prague that the time had come for
the faithful to take up
arms in their own defence, Peter was present
at the debate, and
contended that for Christians war was a crime.
{1419.}
"What is war?" he asked.
"It is a breach of the laws of God!
All
soldiers are violent men,
murderers, a godless mob!"
He hated war like a Quaker,
and soldiers like Tolstoy himself.
He
regarded the terrible
Hussite Wars as a disgrace to both sides.
As
the fiery Ziska swept the
land with his waggons, this Apostle of
peace was sick with horror.
"Where," he asked, in his Reply to
Rockycana, "has God
recalled His commands, 'Thou shalt not kill,'
'Thou shalt not steal,'
'Thou shalt not take thy neighbour's goods'?
If God has not repealed
these commands, they ought still to be
obeyed to-day in Prague and
Tabor. I have learned from Christ,
and
by Christ I stand; and if
the Apostle Peter himself were to come
down from Heaven and say
that it was right for us to take up arms to
defend the truth, I should
not believe him."
For Peter the teaching of
Christ and the Apostles was enough.
It
was supreme, final,
perfect. If a king made a new law,
he was
spoiling the teaching of
Christ. If the Pope issued a bull,
he was
spoiling the teaching of
Christ. If a Council of Bishops
drew up a
decree, they were spoiling
the teaching of Christ. As God,
said
Peter, had revealed His
will to full perfection in Jesus Christ,
there was no need for laws
made by men. "Is the law of God
sufficient, without worldly
laws, to guide and direct us in the path
of the true Christian
religion? With trembling, I answer,
it is.
It was sufficient for
Christ Himself, and it was sufficient for His
disciples." And, therefore, the duty of all true
Christians was as
clear as the noon-day
sun. He never said that Christian
people
should break the law of the
land. He admitted that God might
use
the law for good purposes;
and therefore, as Christ had submitted to
Pilate, so Christians must
submit to Government. But there
their
connection with Government
must end. For heathens the State
was a
necessary evil; for
Christians it was an unclean thing, and the less
they had to do with it the
better. They must never allow the
State
to interfere in matters
within the Church. They must never
drag
each other before the law
courts. They must never act as
judges or
magistrates. They must never take any part whatever
in municipal or
national government. They must never, if possible, live in a
town
at all. If Christians, said Peter, lived in a
town, and paid the
usual rates and taxes, they
were simply helping to support a system
which existed for the
protection of robbers. He regarded
towns as
the abodes of vice, and
citizens as rogues and knaves. The
first
town, he said, was built by
the murderer, Cain. He first murdered
his brother Abel; he then
gathered his followers together; he then
built a city, surrounded by
walls; and thus, by robbery and
violence, he became a
well-to-do man. And modern towns,
said Peter,
were no whit better. At that time the citizens of some towns
in
Bohemia enjoyed certain
special rights and privileges; and this, to
Peter, seemed grossly
unfair. He condemned those citizens
as
thieves. "They are," he
said, "the strength of Anti-Christ; they are
adversaries to Christ; they
are an evil rabble; they are bold in
wickedness; and though they
pretend to follow the truth, they will
sit at tables with wicked
people and knavish followers of Judas."
For true Christians,
therefore, there was only one course open.
Instead of living in
godless towns, they should try to settle in
country places, earn their
living as farmers or gardeners, and thus
keep as clear of the State
as possible. They were not to try
to
support the law at
all. If they did, they were
supporting a wicked
thing, which never tried to
make men better, but only crushed them
with cruel and useless
punishments. They must never try to
make big
profits in business. If they did, they were simply robbing
and
cheating their
neighbours. They must never take an
oath, for oaths
were invented by the
devil. They must never, in a word,
have any
connection with that
unchristian institution called the State.
And here Peter waxed
vigorous and eloquent. He objected,
like
Wycliffe, to the union of
Church and State. Of all the
bargains
ever struck, the most
wicked, ruinous and pernicious was the bargain
struck between Church and
State, when Constantine the Great first
took the Christians under
the shadow of his wing. For three
hundred
years, said Peter, the
Church of Christ had remained true to her
Master; and then this
disgusting heathen Emperor, who had not
repented of a single sin,
came in with his vile "Donation," and
poisoned all the springs of
her life. If the Emperor, said
Peter,
wanted to be a Christian,
he ought first to have laid down his
crown. He was a ravenous beast; he was a wolf
in the fold; he was a
lion squatting at the
table; and at that fatal moment in history,
when he gave his "Donation"
to the Pope, an angel in heaven had
spoken the words: "This day
has poison entered the blood of the
Church."4
"Since that time," said
Peter, "these two powers, Imperial and
Papal, have clung
together. They have turned
everything to account
in Church and in
Christendom for their own impious purposes.
Theologians, professors,
and priests are the satraps of the
Emperor. They ask the Emperor to protect them, so
that they may
sleep as long as possible,
and they create war so that they may have
everything under their
thumb."
If Peter lashed the Church
with whips, he lashed her priests with
scorpions. He accused them of various vices. They were immoral;
they were superstitious;
they were vain, ignorant and empty-headed;
and, instead of feeding the
Church of God, they had almost starved
her to death. He loathed these "honourable men, who
sit in great
houses, these purple men,
with their beautiful mantles, their high
caps, their fat
stomachs." He accused them of
fawning on the rich
and despising the poor. "As
for love of pleasure," he said,
"immorality, laziness,
greediness, uncharitableness and cruelty--as
for these things, the
priests do not hold them as sins when
committed by princes,
nobles and rich commoners. They do
not tell
them plainly, "You will go
to hell if you live on the fat of the
poor, and live a bestial
life," although they know that the rich are
condemned to eternal death
by such behaviour. Oh, no! They prefer
to give them a grand
funeral. A crowd of priests,
clergy, and other
folk make a long
procession. The bells are
rung. There are
masses,
singings, candles and
offerings. The virtues of the dead
man are
proclaimed from the
pulpit. They enter his soul in the
books of
their cloisters and
churches to be continually prayed for, and if
what they say be true, that
soul cannot possibly perish, for he has
been so kind to the Church,
and must, indeed, be well cared for."
He accused them, further,
of laziness and gluttony. "They pretend to
follow Christ," he said,
"and have plenty to eat every day.
They
have fish, spices, brawn,
herrings, figs, almonds, Greek wine and
other luxuries. They generally drink good wine and rich
beer in
large quantities, and so
they go to sleep. When they cannot
get
luxuries they fill
themselves with vulgar puddings till they nearly
burst. And this is the way the priests
fast." He wrote in
a
similar strain of the
mendicant friars. He had no belief
in their
profession of poverty, and
accused them of gathering as much money
as they could. They pocketed more money by begging, he
declared,
than honest folk could earn
by working; they despised plain beef,
fat bacon and peas, and
they wagged their tails with joy when they
sat down to game and other
luxuries. "Many citizens," said Peter,
"would readily welcome this
kind of poverty."
He accused the priests of
loose teaching and shameless winking at
sin. "They prepare Jesus,"
he said, "as a sweet sauce for the world,
so that the world may not
have to shape its course after Jesus and
His heavy Cross, but that
Jesus may conform to the world; and they
make Him softer than oil,
so that every wound may be soothed, and
the violent, thieves,
murderers and adulterers may have an easy
entrance into
heaven."
He accused them of
degrading the Seven Sacraments.
They baptized
sinners, young and old,
without demanding repentance. They
sold the
Communion to rascals and
rogues, like a huckstress offering her
wares. They abused Confession by pardoning men
who never intended
to amend their evil
ways. They allowed men of the
vilest character
to be ordained as
priests. They degraded marriage by
preaching the
doctrine that it was less
holy than celibacy. They distorted
the
original design of Extreme
Unction, for instead of using it to heal
the sick they used it to
line their own pockets. And all
these
blasphemies, sins and
follies were the offspring of that adulterous
union between the Church
and the State, which began in the days of
Constantine the Great. For of all the evils under Heaven,
the
greatest, said Peter, was
that contradiction in terms--a State
Church.
He attacked the great
theologians and scholars. Instead
of using
their mental powers in the
search for truth, these college men, said
Peter, had done their best
to suppress the truth; and at the two
great Councils of Constance
and Basle, they had actually obtained
the help of the temporal
power to crush all who dared to hold
different views from
theirs. What use, asked Peter, were
these
learned pundits? They were no use at all. They never
instructed
anybody. "I do not know,"
he said, "a single person whom they have
helped with their
learning." Had they instructed
Hus? No. Hus
had
the faith in himself; Hus
was instructed by God; and all that these
ravens did for Hus was to
flock together against him.
Again, Peter denounced the
Bohemian nobles. As we read his
biting,
satirical phrases we can
see that he was no respecter of persons and
no believer in artificial
distinctions of rank. For him the
only
distinction worth anything
was the moral distinction between those
who followed the crucified
Jesus and those who rioted in selfish
pleasures.
He had no belief in blue
blood and noble birth. He was
almost,
though not quite, a
Socialist. He had no definite,
constructive
social policy. He was rather a champion of the rights
of the poor,
and an apostle of the
simple life. "The whole value of noble birth,"
he said, "is founded on a
wicked invention of the heathen, who
obtained coats of arms from
emperors or kings as a reward for some
deed of valour." If a man could only buy a coat of
arms--a stag, a
gate, a wolf's head, or a
sausage--he became thereby a nobleman,
boasted of his high
descent, and was regarded by the public as a
saint. For such "nobility" Peter had a
withering contempt.
He
declared that nobles of
this stamp had no right to belong to the
Christian Church. They lived, he said, in flat opposition
to the
spirit of Jesus
Christ. They devoured the
poor. They were a
burden
to the country. They did harm to all men. They set their minds
on
worldly glory, and spent
their money on extravagant dress. "The
men," said he, "wear capes
reaching down to the ground, and their
long hair falls down to
their shoulders; and the women wear so many
petticoats that they can
hardly drag themselves along, and strut
about like the Pope's
courtezans, to the surprise and disgust of the
whole world." What right had these selfish fops to
call themselves
Christians? They did more harm to the cause of
Christ than all the
Turks and heathens in the
world.
Thus Peter, belonging to
none of the sects, found grievous faults in
them all. As he always mentions the Waldenses with
respect, it has
been suggested that he was
a Waldensian himself. But of that
there
is no real proof. He had, apparently, no organizing skill;
he never
attempted to form a new
sect or party, and his mission in the world
was to throw out hints and
leave it to others to carry these hints
into practice. He condemned the Utraquists because they
used the
sword. "If a man," he said,
"eats a black pudding on Friday, you
blame him; but if he sheds
his brother's blood on the scaffold or on
the field of battle you
praise him." He condemned the
Taborites
because they made light of
the Sacraments. "You have called the Holy
Bread," he said, "a
butterfly, a bat, an idol. You have
even told
the people that it is
better to kneel to the devil than to kneel at
the altar; and thus you
have taught them to despise religion and
wallow in unholy
lusts." He condemned the King for
being a King at
all; for no intelligent
man, said Peter, could possibly be a King
and a Christian at the same
time. And finally he condemned the
Pope
as Antichrist and the enemy
of God.
Yet Peter was something
more than a caustic critic. For
the
terrible ills of his age
and country he had one plain and homely
remedy, and that for all
true Christians to leave the Church of Rome
and return to the simple
teaching of Christ and His Apostles.
If
the reader goes to Peter
for systematic theology, he will be
grievously disappointed;
but if he goes for moral vigour, he will
find a well-spread
table.
He did not reason his
positions out like Wycliffe; he was a
suggestive essayist rather
than a constructive philosopher; and,
radical though he was in
some of his views, he held firm to what he
regarded as the fundamental
articles of the Christian faith.
He
believed in the redemptive
value of the death of Christ.
He
believed that man must
build his hopes, not so much on his own good
works, but rather on the
grace of God. He believed, all the same,
that good works were needed
and would receive their due reward.
He
believed, further, in the
real bodily presence of Christ in the
Sacrament; and on this
topic he held a doctrine very similar to
Luther's doctrine of
Consubstantiation. But, over and
above all
these beliefs, he insisted,
in season and out of season, that men
could partake of spiritual
blessings without the aid of Roman
priests. Some fruit of his labours he saw. As the fire of the
Hussite Wars died down, a
few men in different parts of the
country--especially at
Chelcic, Wilenow and Divischau--began to take
Peter as their spiritual
guide. They read his pamphlets
with
delight, became known as
the "Brethren of Chelcic," and wore a
distinctive dress, a grey
cloak with a cord tied round the waist.
The movement spread, the
societies multiplied, and thus, in a way
no records tell, were laid
the foundations of the Church of the
Brethren. Did Peter see that Church? We do not know. No one knows
when Peter was born, and no
one knows when he died. He
delivered
his message; he showed the
way; he flashed his lantern in the
darkness; and thus, whether
he knew it or not, he was the literary
founder of the Brethren's
Church. He fired the hope. He drew the
plans. It was left to another man to erect the
building.
CHAPTER
V.
GREGORY THE PATRIARCH AND
THE SOCIETY AT KUNWALD, 1457-1473.
A brilliant idea is an
excellent thing. A man to work it
out is
still better. At the very time when Peter's followers
were
marshalling their forces,
John Rockycana,5 Archbishop-elect of
Prague (since 1448), was
making a mighty stir in that drunken city.
What Peter had done with
his pen, Rockycana was doing with his
tongue. He preached Peter's doctrines in the
great Thein Church; he
corresponded with him on
the burning topics of the day; he went to
see him at his estate; he
recommended his works to his hearers; and
week by week, in fiery
language, he denounced the Church of Rome as
Babylon, and the Pope as
Antichrist himself. His style was
vivid
and picturesque, his
language cutting and clear. One day
he
compared the Church of Rome
to a burned and ruined city, wherein the
beasts of the forests made
their lairs; and, again, he compared her
to a storm-tossed ship,
which sank beneath the howling waves because
the sailors were fighting
each other. "It is better," he said, "to
tie a dog to a pulpit than
allow a priest to defile it. It
is
better, oh, women! for your
sons to be hangmen than to be priests;
for the hangman only kills
the body, while the priest kills the
soul. Look there," he suddenly exclaimed one
Sunday, pointing to a
picture of St. Peter on the
wall, "there is as much difference
between the priests of
to-day and the twelve apostles as there is
between that old painting
and the living St. Peter in heaven.6
For
the priests have put the
devil into the sacraments themselves, and
are leading you straight to
the fires of Hell."
If an eloquent speaker
attacks the clergy, he is sure to draw a
crowd. No wonder the Thein Church was
crammed. No wonder
the
people listened with
delight as he backed up his hot attack with
texts from the prophet
Jeremiah. No wonder they cried in
their
simple zeal: "Behold, a
second John Hus has arisen."
But John Rockycana was no
second John Hus. For all his fire in the
pulpit, he was only a
craven at heart. "If a true Christian," said
he to a friend, "were to
turn up now in Prague, he would be gaped at
like a stag with golden
horns." But he was not a stag with
golden
horns himself. As he thundered against the Church of
Rome, he was
seeking, not the Kingdom of
God, but his own fame and glory.
His
followers soon discovered
his weakness. Among those who
thronged to
hear his sermons were
certain quiet men of action, who were not
content to paw the ground
for ever. They were followers of
Peter of
Chelcic; they passed his
pamphlets in secret from hand to hand; they
took down notes of
Rockycana's sermons; and now they resolved to
practise what they
heard. If Peter had taught them
nothing else, he
had at least convinced them
all that the first duty of Christian men
was to quit the Church of
Rome. Again and again they appealed to
Rockycana to be their head,
to act up to his words, and to lead them
out to the promised
land. The great orator hemmed and
hawed, put
them off with excuses, and
told them, after the manner of cowards,
that they were too hasty
and reckless. "I know you are right," said
he, "but if I joined your
ranks I should be reviled on every hand."7
But these listeners were
not to be cowed. The more they
studied
Peter's writings, the more
they lost faith in Rockycana.
As
Rockycana refused to lead
them, they left his church in a body, and
found a braver leader among
themselves. His name was Gregory;
he
was known as Gregory the
Patriarch; and in due time, as we shall
see, he became the founder
of the Church of the Brethren. He
was
already a middle-aged
man. He was the son of a Bohemian
knight, and
was nephew to Rockycana
himself. He had spent his youth in
the
Slaven cloister at Prague
as a bare-footed monk, had found the
cloister not so moral as he
had expected, had left it in disgust,
and was now well known in
Bohemia as a man of sterling character,
pious and sensible, humble
and strict, active and spirited, a good
writer and a good
speaker. He was a personal friend
of Peter, had
studied his works with
care, and is said to have been particularly
fond of a little essay
entitled "The Image of the Beast," which he
had borrowed from a
blacksmith in Wachovia. As time
went on he lost
patience with Rockycana,
came into touch with the little societies
at Wilenow and Divischau,
visited Peter on his estate, and gradually
formed the plan of founding
an independent society, and thus doing
himself what Rockycana was
afraid to do. As soldiers desert
a
cowardly general and rally
round the standard of a brave one, so
these listeners in the old
Thein Church fell away from halting
Rockycana, and rallied
round Gregory the Patriarch. From
all parts
of Bohemia, from all ranks
of society, from all whom Peter's
writings had touched, from
all who were disgusted with the Church of
Rome, and who wished to see
the True Church of the Apostles bloom in
purity and beauty again,
from all especially who desired the
ministration of priests of
moral character--from all these was his
little band recruited. How it all happened we know not; but
slowly
the numbers swelled. At last the terrible question arose: How
and
where must they live? The question was one of life and
death. Not
always could they worship
in secret; not always be scattered in
little groups. It was time, they said, to close their
ranks and
form an army that should
last. "After us," Rockycana had said in a
sermon, "shall a people
come well-pleasing unto God and right
healthy for men; they shall
follow the Scriptures, and the example
of Christ and the footsteps
of the Apostles." And these stern
men
felt called to the holy
task.
In the year 1457,
Uladislaus Postumus, King of Bohemia, died, and
George Podiebrad reigned in
his stead; and about the same time it
came to the ears of Gregory
the Patriarch that in the barony of
Senftenberg, on the
north-east border of Bohemia, there lay a
village that would serve as
a home for him and his trusty followers.
And the village was called
Kunwald, and the old castle hard by was
called Lititz. The village was almost deserted, and
only a few
simple folk, of the same
mind as Gregory, lived there now.
What
better refuge could be
found? Gregory the Patriarch laid
the scheme
before his uncle Rockycana;
Rockycana, who sympathized with their
views and wished to help
them, brought the matter before King
George; the King, who owned
the estate, gave his gracious
permission; and Gregory and
his faithful friends wended their way to
Kunwald, and there began to
form the first settlement of the Church
of the Brethren. And now many others from far and wide
came to make
Kunwald their home. Some came from the Thein Church in
Prague, some
across the Glatz Hills from
Moravia, some from Wilenow, Divischau
and Chelcic, some from the
Utraquist Church at Königgratz,8 some,
clothed and in their right
minds, from those queer folk, the
Adamites, and some from
little Waldensian groups that lay dotted
here and there about the
land. There were citizens from
Prague and
other cities. There were bachelors and masters from
the great
University. There were peasants and nobles, learned
and simple,
rich and poor, with their
wives and children; and thus did many, who
longed to be pure and
follow the Master and Him alone, find a
Bethany of Peace in the
smiling little valley of Kunwald.
Here, then, in the valley
of Kunwald, did these pioneers lay the
foundation stones of the
Moravian Church {1457 or 1458.}.9
They
were all of one heart and
one mind. They honoured Christ
alone as
King; they confessed His
laws alone as binding. They were
not
driven from the Church of
Rome; they left of their own free will.
They were men of deep
religious experience. As they
mustered their
forces in that quiet dale,
they knew that they were parting company
from Church and State
alike. They had sought the guidance
of God in
prayer, and declared that
their prayers were answered. They
had met
to seek the truth of God,
not from priests, but from God Himself.
"As we knew not where to
turn," they wrote to Rockycana, "we turned
in prayer to God Himself,
and besought Him to reveal to us His
gracious will in all
things. We wanted to walk in His
ways; we
wanted instruction in His
wisdom; and in His mercy He answered our
prayers." They would rather, they said, spend
weeks in gaol than
take the oath as
councillors. They built cottages,
tilled the land,
opened workshops, and
passed their time in peace and quietness.
For
a law and a testimony they
had the Bible and the writings of Peter
of Chelcic. In Michael Bradacius, a Utraquist
priest, they found a
faithful pastor. They made their own laws and appointed a
body of
twenty-eight elders to
enforce them. They divided
themselves into
three classes, the
Beginners, the Learners and the Perfect;10 and
the Perfect gave up their
private property for the good of the
common cause. They had overseers to care for the
poor. They
had
priests to administer the
sacraments, They had godly laymen to teach
the Scriptures. They had visitors to see to the purity
of family
life. They were shut off from the madding
crowd by a narrow gorge,
with the Glatz Mountains
towering on the one side and the hoary old
castle of Lititz, a few
miles off, on the other; and there in that
fruitful valley, where
orchards smiled and gardens bloomed, and neat
little cottages peeped out
from the woodland, they plied their
trades and read their
Bibles, and kept themselves pure and unspotted
from the world under the
eye of God Almighty.11
But it was not long before
these Brethren had to show of what metal
they were made. With each other they were at peace, but
in Bohemia
the sea still rolled from
the storm. It is curious how
people
reasoned in those
days. As the Brethren used bread
instead of wafer
at the Holy Communion, a
rumour reached the ears of the King that
they were dangerous
conspirators, and held secret meetings of a
mysterious and unholy
nature. And King George held
himself an
orthodox King, and had
sworn to allow no heretics in his kingdom.
As soon therefore, as he
heard that Gregory the Patriarch had come
on a visit to Prague, and
was actually holding a meeting of
University students in the
New Town, he came down upon them like a
wolf on the fold, and gave
orders to arrest them on the spot.
He
was sure they were hatching
a villainous plot of some kind. In
vain
some friends sent warning
to the students. They resolved,
with a
few exceptions, to await
their fate and stand to their guns. "Come
what may," said they, in
their fiery zeal, "let the rack be our
breakfast and the funeral
pile our dinner!" The door of the
room
flew open. The magistrate and his bailiffs
appeared. "All," said
the magistrate, as he stood
at the threshold, "who wish to live
godly in Christ Jesus must
suffer persecution. Follow me
to
prison." They followed him, and were at once
stretched upon the
rack. As soon as the students felt the pain of
torture their
courage melted like April
snow. After they had tasted the
breakfast
they had no appetite for
the dinner. They went in a body to
the
Thein Church, mounted the
pulpit one by one, pleaded guilty to the
charges brought against
them, and confessed, before an admiring
crowd, their full belief in
all the dogmas of the Holy Church of
Rome. But for Gregory the
Patriarch, who was now growing old, the
pain was too severe. His wrists cracked; he swooned, and
was
thought to be dead, and in
his swoon he dreamed a dream which seemed
to him like the dreams of
the prophets of old. He saw, in a
lovely
meadow, a tree laden with
fruit; the fruit was being plucked by
birds; the flights of the
birds were guided by a youth of heavenly
beauty, and the tree was
guarded by three men whose faces he seemed
to know. What meant that dream to Gregory and his
Brethren? It
was
a vision of the good time
coming. The tree was the Church of
the
Brethren. The fruit was her Bible teaching. The birds were her
ministers and helpers. The youth of radiant beauty was the
Divine
Master Himself. And the three men who stood on guard
were the three
men who were afterwards
chosen as the first three Elders of the
Brethren's
Church.
While Gregory lay in his
swoon, his old teacher, his uncle, his
sometime friend, John
Rockycana, hearing that he was dying, came to
see him. His conscience was stricken, his heart
bled, and, wringing
his hands in agony, he
moaned: "Oh, my Gregory, my Gregory, would I
were where thou art." When Gregory recovered, Rockycana
pleaded for
him, and the King allowed
the good old Patriarch to return in peace
to
Kunwald.
Meanwhile, the first
persecution of the Brethren had begun in deadly
earnest {1461.}. King George Podiebrad was furious. He issued an
order that all his subjects
were to join either the Utraquist or the
Roman Catholic Church. He issued another order that all priests
who
conducted the Communion in
the blasphemous manner of the Brethren
should forthwith be put to
death. The priest, old Michael, was
cast
into a dungeon; four
leading Brethren were burned alive; the
peaceful home in Kunwald
was broken; and the Brethren fled to the
woods and mountains. For two full years they lived the life
of
hunted deer in the
forest. As they durst not light a
fire by day,
they cooked their meals by
night; and then, while the enemy dreamed
and slept, they read their
Bibles by the watch-fires' glare, and
prayed till the blood was
dripping from their knees. If
provisions
ran short, they formed a
procession, and marched in single file to
the nearest village; and
when the snow lay on the ground they
trailed behind them a
pine-tree branch, so that folk would think a
wild beast had been
prowling around. We can see them
gathering in
those Bohemian glades. As the sentinel stars set their watch in
the
sky, and the night wind
kissed the pine trees, they read to each
other the golden promise
that where two or three were gathered
together in His name He
would be in the midst of them;12 and
rejoiced that they, the
chosen of God, had been called to suffer for
the truth and the Church
that was yet to be.
In vain they appealed to
Rockycana; he had done with them for ever.
"Thou art of the world,"
they wrote, "and wilt perish with the
world." They were said to have made a covenant
with the devil, and
were commonly dubbed
"Pitmen" because they lived in pits and caves.
Yet not for a moment did
they lose hope. At the very time
when the
king in his folly thought
they were crushed beneath his foot, they
were in reality increasing
in numbers every day. As
their
watch-fires shone in the
darkness of the forests, so their pure
lives shone among a
darkened people. No weapon did they
use except
the pen. They never retaliated, never rebelled,
never took up arms
in their own defence, never
even appealed to the arm of justice.
When smitten on one cheek,
they turned the other; and from
ill-report they went to
good report, till the King for very shame
had to let them be. Well aware was he that brutal force
could never
stamp out spiritual life.
"I advise you," said a certain Bishop, "to
shed no more blood. Martyrdom is somewhat like a
half-roasted joint
of meat, apt to breed
maggots."
And now the time drew near
for Gregory's dream to come true.
When
the Brethren settled in the
valley of Kunwald they had only done
half their work. They had quitted the "benighted" Church
of Rome;
they had not yet put a
better Church in her place. They
had settled
on a Utraquist estate; they
were under the protection of a Utraquist
King; they attended
services conducted by Utraquist priests.
But
this black-and-white policy
could not last for ever. If they
wished
to be godly men themselves,
they must have godly men in the pulpits.
What right had they, the
chosen of God (as they called themselves)
to listen to sermons from
men in league with the State? What
right
had they to take the Holy
Bread and Wine from the tainted hands of
Utraquist priests? What right had they to confess their
sins to men
with the brand of Rome upon
their foreheads? If they were to
have
any priests at all, those
priests, like Caesar's wife, must be above
suspicion. They must be pastors after God's own
heart, who should
feed the people with
knowledge and understanding (Jer. iii. 15).
They must be clear of any
connection with the State. They
must be
descended from the twelve
Apostles. They must be innocent of
the
crime of simony. They must work with their hands for
their living,
and be willing to spend
their money on the poor. But where
could
such clean vessels of the
Lord be found? For a while the
Brethren
were almost in despair; for
a while they were even half inclined to
do without priests at
all. In vain they searched the
country round;
in vain they inquired about
priests in foreign lands. When
they
asked about the pure
Nestorian Church supposed to exist in India,
they received the answer
that that Church was now as corrupt as the
Romish. When they asked about the Greek Church
in Russia, they
received the answer that
the Russian Bishops were willing to
consecrate any man, good or
bad, so long as he paid the fees.
The
question was pressing. If they did without good priests
much
longer, they would lose
their standing in the country. "You must,"
said Brother Martin Lupac,
a Utraquist priest, who had joined their
ranks, "you must establish
a proper order of priests from among
yourselves. If you don't, the whole cause will be
ruined. To do
without priests is no sin
against God; but it is a sin against your
fellow-men." As they pondered on the fateful
question, the very
light of Heaven itself
seemed to flash upon their souls.
It was
they who possessed the
unity of the spirit; and therefore it was
they who were called to
renew the Church of the Apostles.
They had
now become a powerful body;
they were founding settlements all over
the land; they stood, they
said, for the truth as it was in Jesus;
they had all one faith, one
hope, one aim, one sense of the Spirit
leading them onward; and
they perceived that if they were to weather
the gale in those stormy
times they must cut the chains that bound
them to Rome, and fly their
own colours in the breeze.
And so, in 1467, about ten
years after the foundation of Kunwald,
there met at Lhota a Synod
of the Brethren to settle the momentous
question {1467.}, "Is it
God's will that we separate entirely from
the power of the Papacy,
and hence from its priesthood? Is
it God's
will that we institute,
according to the model of the Primitive
Church, a ministerial order
of our own?" For weeks they had
prayed
and fasted day and
night. About sixty Brethren
arrived. The
Synod
was held in a tanner's
cottage, under a cedar tree; and the guiding
spirit Gregory the
Patriarch, for his dream was haunting him still.
The cottage has long since
gone; but the tree is living yet.
The fateful day
arrived. As the morning broke,
those sixty men were
all on their knees in
prayer. If that prayer had been
omitted the
whole proceedings would
have been invalid. As the Master,
said
they, had prayed on the
Mount before he chose His twelve disciples,
so they must spend the
night in prayer before they chose the elders
of the Church. And strange, indeed, their manner of
choosing was.
First the Synod nominated
by ballot nine men of blameless life,
from whom were to be
chosen, should God so will, the first Pastors
of the New Church. Next twelve slips of paper were folded
and put
into a vase. Of these slips nine were blank, and
three were marked
"Jest," the Bohemian for
"is." Then a boy named Procop
entered the
room, drew out nine slips,
and handed them round to the nine
nominated
Brethren.
There was a hush, a deep
hush, in that humble room. All
waited for
God to speak. The fate of the infant Church seemed to
hang in the
balance. For the moment the whole great issue at
stake depended on
the three papers left in
the vase. It had been agreed that
the
three Brethren who received
the three inscribed papers should be
ordained to the
ministry. The situation was
curious. As
the
Brethren rose from their
knees that morning they were all as sure as
men could be that God
desired them to have Pastors of their own; and
yet they deliberately ran
the risk that the lot might decide against
them.13 What slips were those now lying in the
vase? Perhaps
the
three inscribed ones. But it turned out otherwise. All three were
drawn, and Matthias of
Kunwald, Thomas of Prelouic, and Elias of
Chrenouic, are known to
history as the first three ministers of the
Brethren's Church. And then Gregory the Patriarch stepped
forward,
and announced with
trembling voice that these three men were the
very three that he had seen
in his trance in the torture-chamber at
Prague. Not a man in the room was surprised; not
a man doubted that
here again their prayers
had been plainly answered. Together
the
members of the Synod arose
and saluted the chosen three.
Together,
next day, they sang in a
hymn written for the occasion:--
We needed faithful men, and
He
Granted us such. Most earnestly,
We Pray, Lord, let Thy gifts
descend,
That blessing may Thy work
attend.14
But the battle was not won
even yet. If these three good men,
now
chosen by Christ, were to
be acknowledged as priests in Bohemia,
they must be ordained in
the orthodox way by a Bishop of pure
descent from the
Apostles. For this purpose they
applied to
Stephen, a Bishop of the
Waldenses. He was just the man
they
needed. He was a man of noble character. He was a man whose
word
could be trusted. He had often given them information
about the
Waldensian line of
Bishops. He had told them how that
line ran back
to the days of the early
Church. He had told them how
the
Waldensian Bishops had kept
the ancient faith unsullied, and had
never broken the law of
Christ by uniting with the wicked State.
To
that line of Bishops he
himself belonged. He had no
connection with
the Church of Rome, and no
connection with the State. What
purer
orders, thought the
Brethren, could they desire? They
believed his
statements; they trusted
his honour; they admired his personal
character; and now they
sent old Michael Bradacius to see him in
South Moravia and to lay
their case before him. The old
Bishop shed
tears of joy. "He laid his
hand on my head," says Michael, "and
consecrated me a
Bishop." Forthwith the new Bishop
returned to
Lhota, ordained the chosen
three as Priests, and consecrated
Matthias of Kunwald a
Bishop. And thus arose those
Episcopal Orders
which have been maintained
in the Church of the Brethren down to the
present
day.
The goal was reached; the
Church was founded; the work of Gregory
was done. For twenty years he had taught his
Brethren to study the
mind of Christ in the
Scriptures and to seek the guidance of God in
united prayer, and now he
saw them joined as one to face the rising
storm.
"Henceforth," he wrote
gladly to King George Podiebrad, "we have
done with the Church of
Rome." As he saw the evening of life draw
near, he urged his Brethren
more and more to hold fast the teaching
of Peter of Chelcic, and to
regulate their daily conduct by the law
of Christ; and by that law
of Christ he probably meant the "Six
Commandments" of the Sermon
on the Mount.15 He took
these
Commandments literally, and
enforced them with a rod of iron.
No
Brother could be a judge or
magistrate or councillor. No
Brother
could take an oath or keep
an inn, or trade beyond the barest needs
of life. No noble, unless he laid down his rank,
could become a
Brother at all. No peasant could render military service
or act as
a bailiff on a farm. No Brother could ever divorce his wife
or take
an action at law. As long as Gregory remained in their
midst, the
Brethren held true to him
as their leader. He had not,
says
Gindely, a single trace of
personal ambition in his nature; and,
though he might have become
a Bishop, he remained a layman to the
end. Full of years he died, and his bones
repose in a cleft where
tufts of forget-me-not
grow, at Brandeis-on-the-Adler, hard by the
Moravian frontier
{Sept.13th, 1473.}.
CHAPTER
VI.
LUKE OF PRAGUE AND THE HIGH
CHURCH REACTION. 1473-1530.
Of the Brethren who settled
in the valley of Kunwald the greater
number were country
peasants and tradesmen of humble rank.
But
already the noble and
mighty were pressing in. As the
eyes of
Gregory closed in death, a
new party was rising to power.
Already
the Brethren were strong in
numbers, and already they were longing
to snap the fetters that
Gregory had placed upon their feet.
From
Neustadt in the North to
Skutch in the South, and from Chlumec in
the West to Kunwald in the
East, they now lay thickly sprinkled; and
in all the principal towns
of that district, an area of nine hundred
square miles, they were
winning rich and influential members.
In
came the University dons;
in came the aldermen and knights.
In
came, above all, a large
colony of Waldenses, who had immigrated
from the Margravate of
Brandenburg {1480.}. Some settled
at
Fulneck, in Moravia, others
at Landskron, in Bohemia; and now, by
their own request, they
were admitted to the Brethren's Church.16
For a while the Brethren
held to the rule that if a nobleman joined
their Church he must first
lay down his rank. But now that
rule was
beginning to gall and
chafe. They were winning golden
opinions on
every hand; they were
becoming known as the best men for positions
of trust in the State; they
were just the men to make the best
magistrates and aldermen;
and thus they felt forced by their very
virtues to renounce the
narrow ideas of Peter and to play their part
in national and city
life.
At this moment, when new
ideas were budding, there entered the
service of the Church a
young man who is known as Luke of Prague.
He was born about 1460, was
a Bachelor of Prague University, was a
well-read theological
scholar, and for fifty years was the trusted
leader of the
Brethren. Forthwith he read the
signs of the times,
and took the tide at the
flood. In Procop of Neuhaus,
another
graduate, he found a warm
supporter. The two scholars led the
van
of the new movement. The struggle was fierce. On the one side
was
the "great party" of
culture, led by Luke of Prague and Procop of
Neuhaus; on the other the
so-called "little party," the
old-fashioned rigid
Radicals, led by two farmers, Amos and Jacob.
"Ah, Matthias," said
Gregory the Patriarch, on his death-bed,
"beware of the educated
Brethren!" But, despite this
warning, the
educated Brethren won the
day. For once and for ever the
Brethren
resolved that the writings
of Peter and Gregory should no longer be
regarded as binding. At a Synod held at Reichenau they
rejected the
authority of Peter entirely
{1494.}. They agreed that nobles
might
join the Church without
laying down their rank; they agreed that if
a man's business were
honest he might make profits therein; they
agreed that Brethren might
enter the service of the State; and they
even agreed that oaths
might be taken in cases of special need.17
And then, next year, they
made their position still clearer {1495.}.
Instead of taking Peter as
their guide, they now took the Bible and
the Bible alone. "We
content ourselves," they solemnly declared, at
another Synod held at
Reichenau, "with those sacred books which have
been accepted from of old
by all Christians, and are found in the
Bible"; and thus, forty
years before John Calvin, and eighty years
before the Lutherans, they
declared that the words of Holy
Scripture, apart from any
disputed interpretation, should be their
only standard of faith and
practice. No longer did they honour
the
memory of Peter; no longer
did they appeal to him in their writings;
no longer, in a word, can
we call the Brethren the true followers of
Peter of Chelcic. Instead, henceforward, of regarding
Peter as the
founder of their Church,
they began now to regard themselves as the
disciples of Hus. In days
gone by they had spoken of Hus as a
"causer of war." Now they held his name and memory
sacred; and from
this time onward the real
followers of Peter were, not the Brethren,
but the "little party" led
by Amos and Jacob.18
But the scholars led the
Brethren further still. If the
reader will
kindly refer to the chapter
on Peter, he will see that that racy
pamphleteer had far more to
say about good works than about the
merits of saving faith; but
now, after years of keen discussion,
Procop of Neuhaus put to
the Council of Elders the momentous
question: "By what is a man
justified?" The answer given was
clear:
"By the merits of Jesus
Christ." The great doctrine
of
justification by grace was
taught; the old doctrine of justification
by works was modified; and
thus the Brethren's Church became the
first organized Evangelical
Church in Europe.19
And Luke designed to make
her the strongest, too. His energy
never
seemed to flag. As he wished to establish the ministry
more firmly,
he had the number of
Bishops enlarged, and became a Bishop himself.
He enlarged the governing
Council, with his friend Procop of
Neuhaus as Ecclesiastical
Judge. He beautified the Church
Services,
and made the ritual more
ornate. He introduced golden
communion
cups and delicately
embroidered corporals, and some of the Brethren
actually thought that he
was leading them back to Rome. He gave an
impulse to Church music,
encouraged reading both in Priests and in
people, and made a use of
the printing press which in those days was
astounding. Of the five printing presses in all
Bohemia, three
belonged to the Brethren;
of sixty printed works that appeared
between 1500 and 1510, no
fewer than fifty were published by the
Brethren; and of all the
scribes of the sixteenth century, Luke was
the most prolific. He wrote a "Catechism for
Children." He
edited
the first Brethren's hymn
book (1501), the first Church hymnal in
history. He published a commentary on the Psalms,
another on the
Gospel of St. John, and
another on the eleventh chapter of 1
Corinthians; he drew up
"Confessions of Faith," and sent them to the
King; and thus, for the
first time in the history of Bohemia, he
made the newly invented
press a mighty power in the land.
And even with this the good
Bishop was not content {1491.}. If
the
Brethren, thought he, were
true to their name, they must surely long
for fellowship with others
of like mind with themselves. For
this
purpose Luke and his
friends set off to search for Brethren in other
lands. Away went one to find the pure Nestorian
Church that was
said to exist in India, got
as far as Antioch, Jerusalem and Egypt,
and, being misled somehow
by a Jew, returned home with the wonderful
notion that the River Nile
flowed from the Garden of Eden, but with
no more knowledge of the
Church in India than when he first set out.
Another explored the South
of Russia, and the third sought
Christians in Turkey. And Luke himself had little more
success. He
explored a number of
Monasteries in Greece, came on to Rome {1498.},
saw the streets of the city
littered with corpses of men murdered by
Cæsar Borgia, picked up
some useful information about the private
character of the Pope, saw
Savonarola put to death in Florence, fell
in with a few Waldenses in
the Savoy, and then, having sought for
pearls in vain, returned
home in a state of disgust, and convinced
that, besides the Brethren,
there was not to be found a true
Christian Church on the
face of God's fair earth. He even
found
fault with the
Waldenses.
It was time, indeed, for
Luke to return, for trouble was brewing at
home. For some years there dwelt in the town
of Jungbunzlau, the
headquarters of the
Brethren's Church, a smart young man, by name
John Lezek. He began life as a brewer's apprentice;
he then entered
the service of a Brother,
and learned a good deal of the Brethren's
manners and customs; and
now he saw the chance of turning his
knowledge to good
account. If only he told a good
tale against the
Brethren, he would be sure
to be a popular hero. For this
purpose
he visited the parish
priest, and confessed to a number of
abominations committed by
him while among the wicked Brethren.
The
parish priest was
delighted; the penitent was taken to the Church;
and there he told the
assembled crowd the story of his guilty past.
Of all the bad men in the
country, he said, these Brethren were the
worst. He had even robbed his own father with
their consent and
approval. They blasphemed. They took the Communion bread to
their
houses, and there hacked it
in pieces. They were thieves, and
he
himself had committed many
a burglary for them. They murdered
men
and kidnapped their
wives. They had tried to blow up
Rockycana in
the Thein Church with
gunpowder. They swarmed naked up
pillars like
Adam and Eve, and handed
each other apples. They prepared
poisonous
drinks, and put poisonous
smelling powders in their letters.
They
were skilled in witchcraft,
worshipped Beelzebub, and were wont
irreverently to say that
the way to Hell was paved with the bald
heads of priests. As this story was both alarming and
lively, the
parish priest had it taken
down, sealed and signed by witnesses,
copied out, and scattered
broadcast through the land. In vain
John
Lezek confessed soon after,
when brought by the Brethren before a
Magistrate, that his whole
story was a vile invention. If a
man
tells a falsehood and then
denies it, he does not thereby prevent
the falsehood from
spreading.
For now a more powerful foe
than Lezek made himself felt in the
land. Of all the Popes that ever donned the
tiara, Alexander VI. is
said to have presented the
most successful image of the devil.20
He
was the father of the
prince of poisoners, Caesar Borgia; he was
greedy, immoral, fond of
ease and pleasure; he was even said to be a
poisoner himself. If a well-known man died suddenly in
Rome, the
common people took it for
granted that the Pope had poisoned his
supper. For all that he was pious enough in a
way of his own; and
now, in his zeal for the
Catholic cause, he took stern measures
against the Church of the
Brethren. He had heard some
terrible
tales about them. He heard that Peter's pamphlet,
"The
Antichrist,"21 was read all
over the country. He heard that
the
number of the Brethren now
was over 100,000. He resolved to
crush
them to powder {Papal Bull,
Feb. 4th, 1500.}. He sent an agent,
the
Dominican, Dr. Henry
Institoris, as censor of the press.
As soon as
Institoris arrived on the
scene, he heard, to his horror, that most
of the Brethren could read;
and thereupon he informed the Pope that
they had learned this art
from the devil. He revived the
stories of
Lezek, the popular feeling
was fanned to fury, and wire-pullers
worked on the tender heart
of the King.
"Hunt out and destroy these
shameless vagabonds," wrote Dr. Augustin
Käsebrot to King
Uladislaus, "they are not even good enough to be
burnt at the stake. They ought to have their bodies torn by
wild
beasts and their blood
licked up by dogs." For the last
five years
there had grown in the land
a small sect known as Amosites.
They
were followers of old
Farmer Amos; they had once belonged to the
Brethren; they had broken
off when the scholars had won the day, and
now they sent word to the
King to say that the Brethren were
planning to defend their
cause with the sword. "What!" said the
King, "do they mean to play
Ziska? Well, well! We know how to
stop
that!" They were worse than Turks, he declared;
they believed
neither in God nor in the
Communion; they were a set of lazy
vagabonds. He would soon pay them out for their
devilish craft, and
sweep them off the face of
the earth. And to this end he
summoned
the Diet, and, by the
consent of all three Estates, issued the
famous Edict of St. James
{July 25th, 1508.}.22 The decree
was
sweeping and thorough. The meetings of the Brethren, public
and
private, were
forbidden. The books and writings
of the Brethren
must be burnt. All in Bohemia who refused to join the
Utraquist or
Roman Catholic Church were
to be expelled from the country; all
nobles harbouring Brethren
were to be fined, and all their priests
and teachers were to be
imprisoned.
The persecution began. In the village of Kuttenburg lived
a
brother, by name Andrew
Poliwka. As Kuttenburg was a
Romanist
village, he fled for refuge
to the Brethren's settlement at
Leitomischl. But his wife betrayed him. He returned to the
village, and, desiring to
please her, he attended the parish Church.
The occasion was an
installation service. As the sermon
ended and
the host was raised, he
could hold his tongue no longer. "Silence,
Parson Jacob," he cried to
the priest, "you have babbled enough!
Mine hour is come; I will
speak. Dear friends," he
continued,
turning to the people,
"what are you doing? What are you
adoring?
An idol made of bread! Oh! Adore the living God in heaven! He is
blessed for evermore!" The priest ordered him to hold his
peace.
He only shrieked the
louder. He was seized, his head was
dashed
against the pillar, and he
was dragged bleeding to prison.
Next day
he was tried, and asked to
explain why he had interrupted the
service.
"Who caused Abram," he
answered, "to forsake his idolatry and adore
the living God? Who induced Daniel to flee from
idols?" In
vain
was he stretched upon the
rack. No further answer would he
give.
He was burnt to death at
the stake. As the flames began to
lick
his face, he prayed aloud:
"Jesus, Thou Son of the living God, have
mercy upon me, miserable
sinner."
At Strakonic dwelt the
Brother George Wolinsky, a dependent of Baron
John of Rosenberg
{1509.}. The Baron was a mighty
man. He was
Grand Prior of the Knights
of Malta; he was an orthodox subject of
the King, and he determined
that on his estate no villainous
Picards23 should live.
"See," he said one day to George, "I have
made you a servant in the
Church. You must go to Church. You are a
Picard, and I have received
instructions from Prague that all men on
my estate must be either
Utraquists or Catholics."
The Brother refused; the
Baron insisted; and the Prior of Strakonic
was brought to convert the
heretic. "No one," said the Prior,
"should ever be tortured
into faith. The right method is
reasonable
instruction, and innocent
blood always cries to Heaven, 'Lord, Lord,
when wilt Thou avenge
me.'"
But this common sense was
lost on the furious Baron. As
Brother
George refused to yield,
the Baron cast him into the deepest dungeon
of his castle. The bread and meat he had secreted in
his pockets
were removed. The door of the dungeon was barred, and
all that was
left for the comfort of his
soul was a heap of straw whereon to die
and a comb to do his
hair. For five days he lay in the
dark, and
then the Baron came to see
him. The prisoner was almost
dead. His
teeth were closed; his
mouth was rigid; the last spark of life was
feebly glimmering. The Baron was aghast. The mouth was
forced
open, hot soup was poured
in, the prisoner revived, and the Baron
burst into
tears.
"Ah," he exclaimed, "I am
glad he is living"; and allowed George to
return to his
Brethren.
Amid scenes like this,
Bishop Luke was a tower of strength to his
Brethren. For six years the manses were closed,
the Churches empty,
the Pastors homeless, the
people scattered; and the Bishop hurried
from glen to glen, held
services in the woods and gorges, sent
letters to the parishes he
could not visit, and pleaded the cause of
his Brethren in woe in
letter after letter to the King. As the storm
of persecution raged, he
found time to write a stirring treatise,
entitled, "The Renewal of
the Church," and thus by pen and by cheery
word he revived the
flagging hope of all.
For a while the Brethren
were robbed of this morsel of comfort.
As
the Bishop was hastening on
a pastoral visit, he was captured by
Peter von Suda, the
brigand, "the prince and master of all thieves,"
was loaded with chains,
cast into a dungeon, and threatened with
torture and the stake. At that moment destruction complete
and
final seemed to threaten
the Brethren. Never had the billows
rolled
so high; never had the
breakers roared so loud; and bitterly the
hiding Brethren complained
that their leaders had steered them on
the
rocks.
Yet sunshine gleamed amid
the gathering clouds. For some time
there
had been spreading among
the common people a conviction that the
Brethren were under the
special protection of God, and that any man
who tried to harm them
would come to a tragic end. It was
just
while the Brethren were
sunk in despair that several of their
enemies suddenly died, and
people said that God Himself had struck a
blow for the persecuted
"Pitmen." The great Dr. Augustin,
their
fiercest foe, fell dead
from his chair at dinner. Baron
Colditz,
the Chancellor, fell ill of
a carbuncle in his foot, and died.
Baron Henry von Neuhaus,
who had boasted to the King how many
Brethren he had starved to
death, went driving in his sleigh, was
upset, and was skewered on
his own hunting knife. Baron Puta
von
Swihow was found dead in
his cellar. Bishop John of
Grosswardein
fell from his carriage, was
caught on a sharp nail, had his bowels
torn out, and miserably
perished. And the people, struck
with awe,
exclaimed: "Let him that is
tired of life persecute the Brethren,
for he is sure not to live
another year."
Thus the Brethren possessed
their souls in patience till the
persecution ended. The King of Bohemia, Uladislaus II.,
died {March
13th, 1516.}. His successor was only a boy. The Utraquists and
Catholics began to quarrel
with each other. The robber, von
Suda,
set Luke at liberty. The great Bishop became chief Elder of
the
Church. The whole land was soon in a state of
disorder. The
barons
and knights were fighting
each other, and, in the general stress and
storm, the quiet Brethren
were almost forgotten and allowed to live
in
peace.
And just at this juncture
came news from afar that seemed to the
Brethren like glad tidings
from Heaven {1517.}. No longer were
the
Brethren to be alone, no
longer to be a solitary voice crying in the
wilderness. As the Brethren returned from the woods
and mountains,
and worshipped once again
by the light of day, they heard, with
amazement and joy, how
Martin Luther, on Hallows Eve, had pinned his
famous ninety-five Theses
to the Church door at Wittenberg.
The
excitement in Bohemia was
intense. For a while it seemed as
though
Martin Luther would wield
as great an influence there as ever he had
in Germany. For a while the Utraquist priests
themselves, like
Rockycana of yore,
thundered in a hundred pulpits against the Church
of Rome; and Luther, taking
the keenest interest in the growing
movement, wrote a letter to
the Bohemian Diet, and urged the
ecclesiastical leaders in
Prague to break the last fetters that
bound them to
Rome.
For a while his agent,
Gallus Cahera, a butcher's son, who had
studied at Wittenberg, was
actually pastor of the Thein Church
{1523-9.}, referred in his
sermons to the "celebrated Dr. Martin
Luther," and openly urged
the people to pray for that "great man of
God." For a while even a
preacher of the Brethren, named Martin, was
allowed to stand where Hus
had stood, and preach in the Bethlehem
Church. For a while, in a word, it seemed to the
Brethren that the
Reformation now spreading
in Germany would conquer Bohemia at a
rush. The great Luther was loved by many
classes. He was loved
by
the Utraquists because he
had burned the Pope's Bull. He was loved
by the young because he
favoured learning. He was loved by
the
Brethren because he upheld
the Bible as the standard of faith
{1522.}. As soon as Luther had left the Wartburg,
the Brethren
boldly held out to him the
right hand of fellowship; sent two German
Brethren, John Horn and
Michael Weiss, to see him; presented him
with a copy of their
Confession and Catechism; began a friendly
correspondence on various
points of doctrine and discipline, and
thus opened their hearts to
hear with respect what the great
Reformer had to
say.
Amid these bright prospects
Luke of Prague breathed his last {Dec.
11th, 1528.}. As Gregory the Patriarch had gone to his
rest when a
new party was rising among
the Brethren, so Luke of Prague crossed
the cold river of death
when new ideas from Germany were stirring
the hearts of his
friends. He was never quite easy in
his mind
about Martin Luther. He still believed in the Seven
Sacraments.
He
still believed in the
Brethren's system of stern moral discipline.
He still believed, for
practical reasons, in the celibacy of the
clergy. "This eating," he
wrote, "this drinking, this
self-indulgence, this
marrying, this living to the world--what a
poor preparation it is for
men who are leaving Babylon. If a
man
does this he is yoking
himself with strangers. Marriage
never made
anyone holy yet. It is a hindrance to the higher life,
and causes
endless trouble." Above all, he objected to Luther's way
of
teaching the great doctrine
of justification by faith.
"Never, never," he said, in
a letter to Luther, "can you ascribe a
man's salvation to faith
alone. The Scriptures are against
you.
You think that in this you
are doing a good work, but you are
really fighting against
Christ Himself and clinging to an error."
He regarded Luther's
teaching as extreme and one-sided.
He was
shocked by what he heard of
the jovial life led by Luther's students
at Wittenberg, and could
never understand how a rollicking youth
could be a preparation for
a holy ministry. As Gregory
the
Patriarch had warned
Matthias against "the learned Brethren," so
Luke, in his turn, now
warned the Brethren against the loose lives
of Luther's merry-hearted
students; and, in order to preserve the
Brethren's discipline, he
now issued a comprehensive treatise,
divided into two parts--the
first entitled "Instructions for
Priests," and the second
"Instructions and Admonitions for all
occupations, all ages in
life, all ranks and all sorts of
characters." As he lay on his death-bed at
Jungbunzlau, his heart
was stirred by mingled
feelings. There was land in
sight--ah,
yes!--but what grew upon
the enchanting island? He would
rather see
his Church alone and pure
than swept away in the Protestant current.
Happy was he in the day of
his death. So far he had steered
the
Church safely. He must now resign his post to another
pilot who
knew well the coming
waters.
CHAPTER
VII.
THE BRETHREN AT
HOME.
As we have now arrived at
that bend in the lane, when the Brethren,
no longer marching alone,
became a regiment in the conquering
Protestant army, it will be
convenient to halt in our story and look
at the Brethren a little
more closely--at their homes, their trades,
their principles, their
doctrines, their forms of service, and their
life from day to day. After all, what were these Brethren, and
how
did they
live?
They called themselves
Jednota Bratrska--i.e., the Church of the
Brethren. As this word "Jednota" means union, and
is used in this
sense in Bohemia at the
present day, it is possible that the reader
may think that instead of
calling the Brethren a Church, we ought
rather to call them the
Union or Unity of the Brethren. If
he does,
however, he will be
mistaken. We have no right to call
the Brethren
a mere Brotherhood or
Unity. They regarded themselves as
a true
apostolic Church. They believed that their episcopal
orders were
valid. They called the Church of Rome a
Jednota;24 they called the
Lutheran Church a
Jednota;25 they called themselves a Jednota; and,
therefore, if the word
Jednota means Church when applied to
Lutherans and Roman
Catholics, it must also mean Church when applied
to the Bohemian
Brethren. It is not correct to call
them the Unitas
Fratrum. The term is misleading. It suggests a Brotherhood
rather
than an organized
Church. We have no right to call
them a sect; the
term is a needless insult
to their memory.26 As the
Brethren
settled in the Valley of
Kunwald, the great object which they set
before them was to recall
to vigorous life the true Catholic Church
of the Apostles; and as
soon as they were challenged by their
enemies to justify their
existence, they replied in good set terms.
"Above all things,"
declared the Brethren, at a Synod held in 1464,
"we are one in this
purpose. We hold fast the faith of
the Lord
Christ. We will abide in the righteousness and
love of God. We will
trust in the living God. We
will do good works. We will serve
each
other in the spirit of
love. We will lead a virtuous,
humble,
gentle, sober, patient and
pure life; and thereby shall we know that
we hold the faith in truth,
and that a home is prepared for us in
heaven. We will show obedience to one another,
as the Holy
Scriptures command. We will take from each other
instruction,
reproof and punishment, and
thus shall we keep the covenant
established by God through
the Lord Christ."27 To this purpose
the
Brethren held firm. In every detail of their lives--in
business, in
pleasure, in civil
duties--they took the Sermon on the Mount as the
lamp unto their feet. From the child to the old man, from the
serf
to the lord, from the
acoluth to the bishop, the same strict law
held good. What made the Brethren's Church shine so
brightly in
Bohemia before Luther's
days was not their doctrine, but their
lives; not their theory,
but their practice; not their opinions, but
their discipline. Without that discipline they would have
been a
shell without a
kernel. It called forth the
admiration of Calvin,
and drove Luther to
despair. It was, in truth, the
jewel of the
Church, her charm against
foes within and without; and so great a
part did it play in their
lives that in later years they were known
to some as "Brethren of the
Law of Christ."
No portion of the Church
was more carefully watched than the
ministers. As the chief object which the Brethren
set before them
was obedience to the Law of
Christ, it followed, as the night the
day, that the chief quality
required in a minister was not
theological learning, but
personal character. When a man
came
forward as a candidate for
the ministry he knew that he would have
to stand a most searching
examination. His character and
conduct
were thoroughly
sifted. He must have a working
knowledge of the
Bible, a blameless record,
and a living faith in God. For classical
learning the Brethren had
an honest contempt. It smacked too
much
of Rome and monkery. As long as the candidate was a holy man,
and
could teach the people the
plain truths of the Christian faith, they
felt that nothing more was
required, and did not expect him to know
Greek and Hebrew. In vain Luther, in a friendly letter,
urged them
to cultivate more
knowledge. "We have no need," they replied, "of
teachers who understand
other tongues, such as Greek and Hebrew.
It
is not our custom to
appoint ministers who have been trained at
advanced schools in
languages and fine arts. We prefer
Bohemians
and Germans who have come
to a knowledge of the truth through
personal experience and
practical service, and who are therefore
qualified to impart to
others the piety they have first acquired
themselves. And here we are true to the law of God
and the practice
of the early
Church."28 Instead of regarding
learning as an aid to
faith, they regarded it as
an hindrance and a snare. It led,
they
declared, to wordy battles,
to quarrels, to splits, to
uncertainties, to doubts,
to corruptions. As long, they said,
as
the ministers of the Church
of Christ were simple and unlettered
men, so long was the Church
a united body of believers; but as soon
as the parsons began to be
scholars, all sorts of evils arose.
What
good, they argued, had
learning done in the past? It had
caused the
translation of the Bible
into Latin, and had thus hidden its truths
from the common people.
"And therefore," they insisted, "we despise
the learning of
tongues."
For this narrow attitude
they had also another reason. In
order to
be true to the practice of
the early Christian Church, they laid
down the strict rule that
all ministers should earn their living by
manual labour; and the
result was that even if a minister wished to
study he could not find
time to do so. For his work as a
minister
he never received a
penny. If a man among the Brethren
entered the
ministry, he did so for the
pure love of the work. He had no
chance
of becoming rich. He was not allowed to engage in a
business that
brought in large
profits. If he earned any more in
the sweat of his
brow than he needed to make
ends meet, he was compelled to hand the
surplus over to the general
funds of the Church; and if some one
kindly left him some money,
that money was treated in the same way.
He was to be as moderate as
possible in eating and drinking; he was
to avoid all gaudy show in
dress and house; he was not to go to
fairs and banquets; and,
above all, he was not to marry except with
the consent and approval of
the Elders. Of marriage the
Brethren
had rather a poor
opinion. They clung still to the
old Catholic
view that it was less holy
than celibacy. "It is," they said, "a
good thing if two people
find that they cannot live continent
without it." If a minister married he was not
regarded with favour;
he was supposed to have
been guilty of a fleshly weakness; and it is
rather sarcastically
recorded in the old "Book of the Dead" that in
every case in which a
minister failed in his duties, or was
convicted of immorality,
the culprit was a married man.
And yet, for all his humble
style, the minister was held in honour.
As the solemn time of
ordination drew near there were consultations
of ministers with closed
doors, and days set apart for fasting and
prayer throughout the whole
Church. His duties were many
and
various. He was commonly spoken of, not as a
priest, but as the
"servant" of the
Church. He was not a priest in the
Romish sense of
the word. He had no distinctive sacerdotal
powers. He had no
more
power to consecrate the
Sacrament than any godly layman. Of
priests
as a separate class the
Brethren knew nothing. All true
believers
in Christ, said they, were
priests. We can see this from one
of
their regulations. As the times were stormy, and
persecution might
break out at any moment,
the Brethren (at a Synod in 1504) laid down
the rule that when their
meetings at Church were forbidden they
should be held in private
houses, and then, if a minister was not
available, any godly layman
was authorised to conduct the Holy
Communion.29 And thus the minister was simply a
useful "servant."
He gave instruction in
Christian doctrine. He heard
confessions.
He expelled sinners. He welcomed penitents. He administered
the
Sacraments. He trained theological students. If he had the
needful
gift, he preached; if not,
he read printed sermons. He was not
a
ruler lording it over the
flock; he was rather a "servant" bound by
rigid rules. He was not allowed to select his own
topics for
sermons; he had to preach
from the Scripture lesson appointed for
the day. He was bound to visit every member of
his congregation at
least once a quarter; he
was bound to undertake any journey or
mission, however dangerous,
at the command of the Elders; and he was
bound, for a fairly obvious
reason, to take a companion with him
when he called at the
houses of the sick. If he went
alone he might
practise as a doctor, and
give dangerous medical advice; and that,
said the Brethren, was not
his proper business. He was not
allowed
to visit single women or
widows. If he did, there might be
scandals
about him, as there were
about the Catholic priests. For
the
spiritual needs of all
unmarried women the Brethren made special
provision. They were visited by a special
"Committee of Women," and
the minister was not
allowed to interfere.
The good man did not even
possess a home of his own. Instead
of
living in a private manse
he occupied a set of rooms in a large
building known as the
Brethren's House; and the minister, as the
name implies, was not the
only Brother in it. "As Eli had trained
Samuel, as Elijah had
trained Elisha, as Christ had trained His
disciples, as St. Paul
trained Timothy and Titus," so a minister of
the Brethren had young men
under his charge. There, under
the
minister's eye, the
candidates for service in the Church were
trained. Neither now nor at any period of their
history had the
Bohemian Brethren any
theological colleges. If a boy
desired to
become a minister he
entered the Brethren's House at an early age,
and was there taught a
useful trade. Let us look at the
inmates of
the
House.
First in order, next to the
Priest himself, were the Deacons.
They
occupied a double
position. They were in the first
stage of
priesthood, and in the last
stage of preparation for it.
Their
duties were manifold. They supplied the out-preaching
places. They
repeated the pastor's
sermon to those who had not been able to
attend the Sunday
service. They assisted at the Holy
Communion in
the distribution of the
bread and wine. They preached now
and then
in the village Church to
give their superior an opportunity for
criticism and
correction. They managed the
domestic affairs of the
house. They acted as sacristans or
churchwardens. They assisted
in
the distribution of alms,
and took their share with the minister in
manual labour; and then, in
the intervals between these trifling
duties, they devoted their
time to Bible study and preparation for
the ministry proper. No wonder they never became very
scholarly
pundits; and no wonder that
when they went off to preach their
sermons had first to be
submitted to the head of the house for
approval.
Next to the Deacons came
the Acoluths, young men or boys living in
the same building and
preparing to be Deacons. They were
trained by
the minister, very often
from childhood upwards. They rang
the bell
and lighted the candles in
the Church, helped the Deacons in
household arrangements, and
took turns in conducting the household
worship. Occasionally they were allowed to
deliver a short address
in the Church, and the
congregation "listened with kindly
forbearance." When they were accepted by the Synod as
Acoluths they
generally received some
Biblical name, which was intended to express
some feature in the
character. It is thus that we
account for such
names as Jacob Bilek and
Amos Comenius.
Inside this busy industrial
hive the rules were rigid. The
whole
place was like a
boarding-school or college. At the
sound of a bell
all rose, and then came
united prayer and Scripture reading; an hour
later a service, and then
morning study. As the afternoon was
not
considered a good time for
brain work, the Brethren employed it in
manual labour, such as
weaving, gardening and tailoring.
In the
evening there was sacred
music and singing. At meal times
the
Acoluths recited passages
of Scripture, or read discourses, or took
part in theological
discussions.
No one could leave the
house without the pastor's permission, and
the pastor himself could
not leave his parish without the Bishop's
permission. If he travelled at all he did so on
official business,
and then he lodged at other
Brethren's Houses, when the Acoluths
washed his feet and
attended to his personal comforts.
The Brethren's rules struck
deeper still. As the Brethren
despised
University education, it is
natural to draw the plain conclusion
that among them the common
people were the most benighted and
ignorant in the land. The very opposite was the case. Among them
the common people were the
most enlightened in the country. Of
the
Bohemian people, in those
days, there were few who could read or
write; of the Brethren
there was scarcely one who could not.
If the
Brethren taught the people
nothing else, they at least taught them
to read their native
tongue; and their object in this was to spread
the knowledge of the Bible,
and thus make the people good
Protestants. But in those days a man who could read
was regarded as
a prodigy of learning. The result was widespread alarm. As the
report gained ground that
among the Brethren the humblest people
could read as well as the
priest, the good folk in Bohemia felt
compelled to concoct some
explanation, and the only explanation they
could imagine was that the
Brethren had the special assistance of
the devil.30 If a man, said they, joined the ranks of
the Brethren,
the devil immediately
taught him the art of reading, and if, on the
other hand, he deserted the
Brethren, the devil promptly robbed him
of the power, and reduced
him again to a wholesome benighted
condition. "Is it really
true," said Baron Rosenberg to his
dependant George Wolinsky,
"that the devil teaches all who become
Picards to read, and that
if a peasant leaves the Brethren he is
able to read no
longer?"
In this instance, however,
the devil was innocent. The real
culprit
was Bishop Luke of
Prague. Of all the services
rendered by Luke to
the cause of popular
education and moral and spiritual instruction,
the greatest was his
publication of his "Catechism for Children,"
commonly known as "The
Children's Questions." It was a
masterly and
comprehensive
treatise. It was published first,
of course, in the
Bohemian language
{1502.}. It was published again in
a German
edition for the benefit of
the German members of the Church {1522.}.
It was published again,
with some alterations, by a Lutheran at
Magdeburg {1524.}. It was published again, with more
alterations,
by another Lutheran, at
Wittenberg {1525.}. It was
published again,
in abridged form, at
Zürich, and was recommended as a manual of
instruction for the
children at St. Gallen {1527.}. And
thus it
exercised a profound
influence on the whole course of the
Reformation, both in
Germany and in Switzerland. For us,
however,
the point of interest is
its influence in Bohemia and Moravia.
It
was not a book for the
priests. It was a book for the
fathers of
families. It was a book found in every Brother's
home. It was
the
children's "Reader." As the boys and girls grew up in
the
Brethren's Church, they
learned to read, not in national schools,
but in their own homes; and
thus the Brethren did for the children
what ought to have been
done by the State. Among them the
duties of
a father were clearly
defined. He was both a schoolmaster
and a
religious instructor. He was the priest in his own
family. He
was
to bring his children up in
the Christian faith. He was not
to
allow them to roam at
pleasure, or play with the wicked children of
the world. He was to see that they were devout at
prayers,
respectful in speech, and
noble and upright in conduct. He
was not
to allow brothers and
sisters to sleep in the same room, or boys and
girls to roam the daisied
fields together. He was not to
strike his
children with a stick or
with his fists. If he struck them
at all,
he must do so with a
cane. Above all, he had to teach
his children
the Catechism. They were taught by their parents until
they were
twelve years old; they were
then taken in hand by their sponsors;
and thus they were prepared
for Confirmation, not as in the Anglican
Church, by a clergyman
only, but partly by their own parents and
friends.
The Brethren's rules struck
deeper still. For law and order
the
Brethren had a
passion. Each congregation was
divided into three
classes: the Beginners,
those who were learning the "Questions" and
the first elements of
religion; the Proficients, the steady members
of the Church; and the
Perfect, those so established in faith, hope
and love as to be able to
enlighten others. For each class
a
separate Catechism was
prepared. At the head, too, of
each
congregation was a body of
civil Elders. They were elected by
the
congregation from the
Perfect. They assisted the pastor
in his
parochial duties. They looked after his support in case he
were in
special need. They acted as poor-law guardians,
lawyers,
magistrates and umpires,
and thus they tried to keep the people at
peace and prevent them from
going to law. Every three months
they
visited the houses of the
Brethren, and inquired whether business
were honestly conducted,
whether family worship were held, whether
the children were properly
trained. For example, it was one of
the
duties of a father to talk
with his children at the Sunday
dinner-table on what they
had heard at the morning service; and when
the Elder paid his
quarterly visit he soon discovered, by examining
the children, how far this
duty had been fulfilled.
The Brethren's rules struck
deeper still. For the labourer in
the
field, for the artizan in
the workshop, for the tradesman with his
wares, for the baron and
his tenants, for the master and his
servants, there were laws
and codes to suit each case, and make
every trade and walk in
life serve in some way to the glory of God.
Among the Brethren all work
was sacred. If a man was not able
to
show that his trade was
according to the law of Christ and of direct
service to His holy cause,
he was not allowed to carry it on at all.
He must either change his
calling or leave the Church. In
the
Brethren's Church there
were no dice makers, no actors, no painters,
no professional musicians,
no wizards or seers, no alchemists, no
astrologers, no courtezans
or panderers. The whole tone was
stern
and puritanic. For art, for music, for letters and for
pleasure the
Brethren had only contempt,
and the fathers were warned against
staying out at night and
frequenting the card-room and the
liquor-saloon. And yet, withal, these stern Brethren
were kind and
tender-hearted. If the accounts handed down are to be
believed, the
villages where the Brethren
settled were the homes of happiness and
peace. As the Brethren had no definite social
policy, they did not,
of course, make any attempt
to break down the distinctions of rank;
and yet, in their own way,
they endeavoured to teach all classes to
respect each other. They enjoined the barons to allow
their
servants to worship with
them round the family altar. They
urged
the rich to spend their
money on the poor instead of on dainties and
fine clothes. They forbade the poor to wear silk,
urged them to be
patient, cheerful and
industrious, and reminded them that in the
better land their troubles
would vanish like dew before the rising
sun. For the poorest of all, those in actual
need, they had special
collections several times a
year. The fund was called the
Korbona,
and was managed by three
officials. The first kept the box,
the
second the key, the third
the accounts. And the rich and poor
had
all to bow to the same
system of discipline. There were
three
degrees of punishment. For the first offence the sinner
was
privately admonished. For the second he was rebuked before
the
Elders, and excluded from
the Holy Communion until he repented.
For
the third he was denounced
in the Church before the whole
congregation, and the loud
"Amen" of the assembled members
proclaimed his banishment
from the Brethren's Church.
The system of government
was Presbyterian. At the head of
the whole
Brethren's Church was a
board, called the "Inner Council," elected
by the Synod. Next came the Bishops, elected also by
the Synod.
The supreme authority was
this General Synod. It consisted of
all
the ministers. As long as the Inner Council held office
they were,
of course, empowered to
enforce their will; but the final court of
appeal was the Synod, and
by the Synod all questions of doctrine and
policy were
settled.
The doctrine was simple and
broad. As the Brethren never had
a
formal creed, and never
used their "Confessions of Faith" as tests,
it may seem a rather vain
endeavour to inquire too closely into
their theological
beliefs. And yet, on the other
hand, we know
enough to enable the
historian to paint a life-like picture.
For us
the important question is,
what did the Brethren teach their
children? If we know what the Brethren taught
their children we
know what they valued most;
and this we have set before us in the
Catechism drawn up by Luke
of Prague and used as an authorised
manual of instruction in
the private homes of the Brethren.
It
contained no fewer than
seventy-six questions. The answers
are
remarkably full, and
therefore we may safely conclude that, though
it was not an exhaustive
treatise, it gives us a wonderfully clear
idea of the doctrines which
the Brethren prized most highly. It
is
remarkable both for what it
contains and for what it does not
contain. It has no distinct and definite
reference to St. Paul's
doctrine of justification
by faith. It is Johannine rather
than
Pauline in its tone. It contains a great deal of the teaching
of
Christ and a very little of
the teaching of St. Paul. It has more to
say about the Sermon on the
Mount than about any system of dogmatic
theology. For one sentence out of St. Paul's
Epistles it has ten
out of the Gospel of St.
Matthew. As we read the answers in
this
popular treatise, we are
able to see in what way the Brethren
differed from the Lutheran
Protestants in Germany. They
approached
the whole subject of
Christian life from a different point of view.
They were less dogmatic,
less theological, less concerned about
accurate definition, and
they used their theological terms in a
broader and freer way. For example, take their definition of
faith.
We all know the definition
given by Luther. "There are," said
Luther, "two kinds of
believing: first, a believing about God which
means that I believe that
what is said of God is true. This
faith
is rather a form of
knowledge than a faith. There is,
secondly, a
believing in God which
means that I put my trust in Him, give myself
up to thinking that I can
have dealings with Him, and believe
without any doubt that He
will be and do to me according to the
things said of Him. Such
faith, which throws itself upon God,
whether in life or in
death, alone makes a Christian man."
But the
Brethren gave the word
faith a richer meaning. They made
it signify
more than trust in God.
They made it include both hope and love.
They made it include
obedience to the Law of Christ.
"What is faith in the Lord
God?" was one question in the Catechism.
"It is to know God, to know
His word; above all, to love Him, to do
His commandments, and to
submit to His will."
"What is faith in
Christ?"
"It is to listen to His
word, to know Him, to honour Him, to love
Him and to join the company
of His followers."31
And this is the tone all
through the Catechism and in all the early
writings of the
Brethren. As a ship, said Luke, is
not made of one
plank, so a Christian
cannot live on one religious doctrine.
The
Brethren had no pet
doctrines whatever. They had none
of the
distinctive marks of a
sect. They taught their children
the
Apostles' Creed, the Ten
Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Eight
Beatitudes, and the "Six
Commandments" of the Sermon on the Mount.
They taught the orthodox
Catholic doctrines of the Holy Trinity and
the Virgin Birth. They held, they said, the universal
Christian
faith. They enjoined the children to honour,
but not worship, the
Virgin Mary and the Saints,
and they warned them against the
adoration of pictures. If the Brethren had any peculiarity at
all,
it was not any distinctive
doctrine, but rather their insistence on
the practical duties of the
believer. With Luther, St.
Paul's
theology was foremost; with
the Brethren (though not denied) it fell
into the background. With Luther the favourite court of
appeal was
St. Paul's Epistle to the
Galatians; with the Brethren it was rather
the Sermon on the Mount and
the tender Epistles of St. John.
Again the Brethren differed
from Luther in their doctrine of the
Lord's Supper. As this subject was then the fruitful
source of much
discussion and bloodshed,
the Brethren at first endeavoured to avoid
the issue at stake by
siding with neither of the two great parties
and falling back on the
simple words of Scripture. "Some say," they
said, "it is only a
memorial feast, that Christ simply gave the
bread as a memorial. Others say that the bread is really the
body
of Christ, who is seated at
the right hand of God. We reject both
these views; they were not
taught by Christ Himself. And if
anyone
asks us to say in what way
Christ is present in the sacrament, we
reply that we have nothing
to say on the subject. We simply
believe
what He Himself said, and
enjoy what He has given."32
But this attitude could not
last for ever. As the storms
of
persecution raged against
them, the Brethren grew more and more
radical in their
views. They denied the doctrine
of
Transubstantiation; they
denied also the Lutheran doctrine of
Consubstantiation; they
denied that the words in St. John's Gospel
about eating the flesh and
drinking the blood of Christ had any
reference to the Lord's
Supper. They took the whole passage
in a
purely spiritual
sense. If those words, said Bishop
Luke, referred
to the Sacrament, then all
Catholics, except the priests, would be
lost; for Catholics only
ate the flesh and did not drink the blood,
and could, therefore, not
possess eternal life. They denied,
in a
word, that the Holy
Communion had any value apart from the faith of
the believer; they
denounced the adoration of the host as idolatry;
and thus they adopted much
the same position as Wycliffe in England
nearly two hundred years
before. The Lord Christ, they said,
had
three modes of
existence. He was present bodily at
the right hand
of God; He was present
spiritually in the heart of every believer;
He was present
sacramentally, but not personally, in the bread and
wine; and, therefore, when
the believer knelt in prayer, he must
kneel, not to the bread and
wine, but only to the exalted Lord in
Heaven.
Again, the Brethren
differed from Luther in their doctrine of Infant
Baptism. If a child, said Luther, was prayed for
by the Church, he
was thereby cleansed from
his unbelief, delivered from the power of
the devil, and endowed with
faith; and therefore the child was
baptised as a
believer.33 The Brethren rejected
this teaching.
They called it Romish. They held that no child could be a
believer
until he had been
instructed in the faith. They had
no belief in
baptismal
regeneration. With them Infant
Baptism had quite a
different meaning. It was simply the outward and visible
sign of
admission to the
Church. As soon as the child had
been baptised, he
belonged to the class of
the Beginners, and then, when he was twelve
years old, he was taken by
his godfather to the minister, examined
in his "Questions," and
asked if he would hold true to the faith he
had been taught. If he said "Yes!" the minister struck
him in the
face, to teach him that he
would have to suffer for Christ; and
then, after further
instruction, he was confirmed by the minister,
admitted to the communion,
and entered the ranks of the Proficient.
Such, then, was the life,
and such were the views, of the Bohemian
Brethren. What sort of picture does all this bring
before us? It
is the picture of a body of
earnest men, united, not by a common
creed, but rather by a
common devotion to Christ, a common reverence
for Holy Scripture, and a
common desire to revive the customs of the
early Christian
Church.34 In some of their views
they were narrow,
in others remarkably
broad. In some points they had
still much to
learn; in others they were
far in advance of their times, and
anticipated the charitable
teaching of the present day.
CHAPTER
VIII.
JOHN AUGUSTA AND HIS
POLICY, 1531-1548.
As the great Bishop Luke
lay dying at Jungbunzlau, there was rising
to fame among the Brethren
the most brilliant and powerful leader
they had ever known. Again we turn to the old Thein Church;
again
the preacher is denouncing
the priests; and again in the pew is an
eager listener with soul
aflame with zeal. His name was
John
Augusta. He was born, in 1500, at Prague. His father was a
hatter,
and in all probability he
learned the trade himself. He was
brought
up in the Utraquist Faith;
he took the sacrament every Sunday in the
famous old Thein Church;
and there he heard the preacher declare
that the priests in Prague
cared for nothing but comfort, and that
the average Christians of
the day were no better than crack-brained
heathen sprinkled with holy
water. The young man was staggered;
he
consulted other priests,
and the others told him the same dismal
tale. One lent him a pamphlet, entitled "The
Antichrist"; another
lent him a treatise by Hus;
and a third said solemnly: "My son, I
see that God has more in
store for you than I can understand."
But
the strangest event of all
was still to come. As he rode one
day in
a covered waggon with two
priests of high rank, it so happened that
one of them turned to
Augusta and urged him to leave the Utraquist
Church and join the ranks
of the Brethren at Jungbunzlau.
Augusta
was
horrified.
Again he consulted the
learned priest; again he received the same
strange counsel; and one
day the priest ran after him, called him
back, and said: "Listen,
dear brother! I beseech you, leave
us.
You will get no good among
us. Go to the Brethren at Bunzlau,
and
there your soul will find
rest." Augusta was shocked
beyond
measure. He hated the Brethren, regarded them as
beasts, and had
often warned others against
them. But now he went to see
them
himself, and found to his
joy that they followed the Scriptures,
obeyed the Gospel and
enforced their rules without respect of
persons. For a while he was in a quandary. His conscience drew
him
to the Brethren, his honour
held him to the Utraquists, and finally
his own father confessor
settled the question for him.
"Dear friend," said the
holy man, "entrust your soul to the
Brethren. Never mind if some of them are
hypocrites, who do not
obey their own rules. It is your business to obey the
rules
yourself. What more do you want? If you return to us in
Prague,
you will meet with none but
sinners and sodomites."
And so, by the advice of
Utraquist priests, this ardent young man
joined the ranks of the
Brethren, was probably trained in the
Brethren's House at
Jungbunzlau, and was soon ordained as a
minister. Forthwith he rose to fame and power in
the pulpit.
His
manner was dignified and
noble. His brow was lofty, his
eye
flashing, his bearing the
bearing of a commanding king. He
was a
splendid speaker, a ready
debater, a ruler of men, an inspirer of
action; he was known ere
long as the Bohemian Luther; and he spread
the fame of the Brethren's
Church throughout the Protestant world.
Full soon, in truth, he
began his great campaign. As he
entered on
his work as a preacher of
the Gospel, he found that among the
younger Brethren there were
quite a number who did not feel at all
disposed to be bound by the
warning words of Luke of Prague.
They
had been to the great
Wittenberg University; they had mingled with
Luther's students; they had
listened to the talk of Michael Weiss,
who had been a monk at
Breslau, and had brought Lutheran opinions
with him; they admired both
Luther and Melancthon; and they now
resolved, with one consent,
that if the candlestick of the
Brethren's Church was not
to be moved from out its place, they must
step shoulder to shoulder
with Luther, become a regiment in the
conquering Protestant army,
and march with him to the goodly land
where the flower of the
glad free Gospel bloomed in purity and sweet
perfume. At the first opportunity Augusta, their
leader, brought
forward their views. At a Synod held at
Brandeis-on-the-Adler,
summoned by Augusta's
friend, John Horn, the senior Bishop of the
Church, for the purpose of
electing some new Bishops, Augusta rose
to address the
assembly. He spoke in the name of
the younger
clergy, and immediately
commenced an attack upon the old Executive
Council. He accused them of listlessness and
sloth; he said that
they could not understand
the spirit of the age, and he ended his
speech by proposing himself
and four other broad-minded men as
members of the
Council. The old men were shocked;
the young were
entranced; and Augusta was
elected and consecrated a Bishop, and
thus, at the age of
thirty-two, became the leader of the Brethren's
Church. He had three great schemes in view;
first, friendly
relations with Protestants
in other countries; second, legal
recognition of the Brethren
in Bohemia; third, the union of all
Bohemian
Protestants.
First, then, with Augusta
to lead them on, the Brethren enlisted in
the Protestant army, and
held the banner of their faith aloft that
all the world might
see. As the Protestants in Germany
had issued
the Confession of Augsburg,
and had it read in solemn style before
the face of the Emperor,
Charles V., so now the Brethren issued a
new and full "Confession of
Faith," to be sent first to George,
Margrave of Brandenburg,
and then laid in due time before Ferdinand,
King of Bohemia. It was a characteristic Brethren's
production.35
It is perfectly clear from
this Confession that the Brethren had
separated from Rome for
practical rather than dogmatic reasons.
It
is true the Brethren
realised the value of faith; it is true the
Confession contained the
sentence, "He is the Lamb that taketh away
the sins of the world; and
whosoever believeth in Him and calleth on
His name shall be saved";
but even now the Brethren did not, like
Luther, lay stress on the
doctrine of justification by faith alone.
And yet Luther had no fault
to find with this Confession. It
was
addressed to him, was
printed at Wittenberg, was issued with his
consent and approval, and
was praised by him in a preface. It
was
read and approved by John
Calvin, by Martin Bucer, by Philip
Melancthon, by pious old
George, Margrave of Brandenburg, and by
John Frederick, Elector of
Saxony. Again and again the
Brethren
sent deputies to see the
great Protestant leaders. At
Wittenberg,
Augusta discussed good
morals with Luther and Melancthon; and at
Strasburg, Cerwenka, the
Brethren's historian, held friendly counsel
with Martin Bucer and
Calvin. Never had the Brethren been
so widely
known, and never had they
received so many compliments.
Formerly
Luther, who liked plain
speech, had called the Brethren
"sour-looking hypocrites
and self-grown saints, who believe in
nothing but what they
themselves teach." But now he was
all good
humour. "There never have
been any Christians," he said, in a
lecture to his students,
"so like the apostles in doctrine and
constitution as these
Bohemian Brethren."
"Tell your Brethren," he
said to their deputies, "to hold fast what
God has given them, and
never give up their constitution and
discipline. Let them take no heed of
revilements. The world
will
behave foolishly. If you in Bohemia were to live as we do,
what is
said of us would be said of
you, and if we were to live as you do,
what is said of you would
be said of us." "We have never," he added,
in a letter to the
Brethren, "attained to such a discipline and holy
life as is found among you,
but in the future we shall make it our
aim to attain
it."
The other great Reformers
were just as enthusiastic. "How shall I,"
said Bucer, "instruct those
whom God Himself has instructed!
You
alone, in all the world,
combine a wholesome discipline with a pure
faith." "We," said Calvin,
"have long since recognised the value of
such a system, but cannot,
in any way, attain to it." "I am
pleased," said Melancthon,
"with the strict discipline enforced in
your congregations. I wish we could have a stricter
discipline in
ours." It is clear what all this means. It means that the
Brethren, in their humble
way, had taught the famous Protestant
leaders the value of a
system of Church discipline and the need of
good works as the proper
fruit of faith.
Meanwhile Augusta pushed
his second plan. The task before
him was
gigantic. A great event had taken place in
Bohemia. At the
battle
of Mohacz, in a war with
the Turks, Louis, King of Bohemia, fell
from his horse when
crossing a stream, and was drowned {1526.}. The
old line of Bohemian Kings
had come to an end. The crown fell
into
the hands of the Hapsburgs;
the Hapsburgs were the mightiest
supporters of the Church of
Rome; and the King of Bohemia, Ferdinand
I., was likewise King of
Hungary, Archduke of Austria, King of the
Romans, and brother of the
Emperor Charles V., the head of the Holy
Roman
Empire.
For the Brethren the
situation was momentous. As Augusta
scanned
the widening view, he saw
that the time was coming fast when the
Brethren, whether they
would or no, would be called to play their
part like men in a vast
European conflict. Already the
Emperor
Charles V. had threatened
to crush the Reformation by force; already
(1530) the Protestant
princes in Germany had formed the Smalkald
League; and Augusta,
scenting the battle from afar, resolved to
build a fortress for the
Brethren. His policy was clear and
simple.
If the King of Bohemia
joined forces with the Emperor, the days of
the Brethren's Church would
soon be over. He would make the
King of
Bohemia their friend, and
thus save the Brethren from the horrors of
war. For this purpose Augusta now instructed
the powerful Baron,
Conrad Krajek, the richest
member of the Brethren's Church, to
present the Brethren's
Confession of Faith to King Ferdinand.
The
Baron undertook the
task. He was the leader of a group
of Barons
who had recently joined the
Church; he had built the great Zbor of
the Brethren in
Jungbunzlau, known as "Mount Carmel"; he had been
the first to suggest a
Confession of Faith, and now, having signed
the Confession himself, he
sought out the King at Vienna, and was
admitted to a private
interview {Nov. 11th, 1535.}. The
scene was
stormy. "We would like to
know," said the King, "how you Brethren
came to adopt this
faith. The devil has persuaded
you."
"Not the devil, gracious
liege," replied the Baron, "but Christ the
Lord through the Holy
Scriptures. If Christ was a Picard,
then I am
one
too."
The King was beside himself
with rage.
"What business," he
shouted, "have you to meddle with such things?
You are neither Pope, nor
Emperor, nor King. Believe what you will!
We shall not prevent
you! If you really want to go to
hell, go by
all
means!"
The Baron was silent. The King paused.
"Yes, yes," he continued,
"you may believe what you like and we
shall not prevent you; but
all the same, I give you warning that we
shall put a stop to your
meetings, where you carry on your
hocus-pocus."
The Baron was almost
weeping.
"Your Majesty," he
protested, "should not be so hard on me and my
noble friends. We are the most loyal subjects in your
kingdom."
The King softened, spoke
more gently, but still held to his point.
"I swore," he said, "at my
coronation to give justice to the
Utraquists and Catholics,
and I know what the statute says."
As the King spoke those
ominous words, he was referring, as the
Baron knew full well, to
the terrible Edict of St. James.
The
interview ended; the Baron
withdrew; the issue still hung doubtful.
And yet the Baron had not
spoken in vain. For three days the
King
was left undisturbed; and
then two other Barons appeared and
presented the Confession,
signed by twelve nobles and thirty-three
knights, in due form {Nov.
14th}.
"Do you really think," they
humbly said, "that it helps the unity of
the kingdom when priests
are allowed to say in the pulpit that it is
less sinful to kill a
Picard than it is to kill a dog."
The King was touched; his
anger was gone, and a week later he
promised the Barons that as
long as the Brethren were loyal subjects
he would allow them to
worship as they pleased. For some
years the
new policy worked very
well, and the King kept his promise.
The
Brethren were extending on
every hand. They had now at least
four
hundred churches and two
hundred thousand members. They
printed and
published translations of
Luther's works. They had a church
in the
city of Prague itself. They enjoyed the favour of the
leading
nobles in the land; and
Augusta, in a famous sermon, expressed the
hope that before very long
the Brethren and Utraquists would be
united and form one
National Protestant Church.36
At this point a beautiful
incident occurred. As the Brethren
were
now so friendly with
Luther, there was a danger that they would
abandon their discipline,
become ashamed of their own little Church,
and try to imitate the
teaching and practice of their powerful
Protestant friends. For some years after Luke's death they
actually
gave way to this
temptation, and Luke's last treatise, "Regulations
for Priests," was
scornfully cast aside. But the
Brethren soon
returned to their
senses. As John Augusta and John
Horn travelled
in Germany, they made the
strange and startling discovery that,
after all, the Brethren's
Church was the best Church they knew.
For
a while they were dazzled
by the brilliance of the Lutheran
preachers; but in the end
they came to the conclusion that though
these preachers were clever
men they had not so firm a grip on
Divine truth as the
Brethren. At last, in 1546, the
Brethren met in
a Synod at Jungbunzlau to
discuss the whole situation. With
tears
in his eyes John Horn
addressed the assembly. "I have never
understood till now," he
said, "what a costly treasure our Church
is. I have been blinded by the reading of
German books! I
have
never found any thing so
good in those books as we have in the books
of the Brethren. You have no need, beloved Brethren, to
seek for
instruction from
others. You have enough at
home. I exhort you
to
study what you have
already; you will find there all you need."
Again the discipline was
revived in all its vigour; again, by
Augusta's advice, the
Catechism of Luke was put into common use, and
the Brethren began to open
schools and teach their principles to
others.
But now their fondest hopes
were doomed to be blasted. For the
last
time Augusta went to
Wittenberg to discuss the value of discipline
with Luther, and as his
stay drew to a close he warned the great man
that if the German
theologians spent so much time in spinning
doctrines and so little
time in teaching morals, there was danger
brewing ahead. The warning soon came true. The Reformer died. The
gathering clouds in Germany
burst, and the Smalkald War broke out.
The storm swept on to
Bohemia. As the Emperor gathered
his forces
in Germany to crush the
Protestant Princes to powder, so Ferdinand
in Bohemia summoned his
subjects to rally round his standard at
Leitmeritz and defend the
kingdom and the throne against the
Protestant rebels. For the first time in their history the
Bohemian
Brethren were ordered to
take sides in a civil war. The
situation
was delicate. If they fought for Ferdinand they would
be untrue to
their faith; if they fought
against him they would be disloyal to
their country. In this dilemma they did the best they
could.
As soon as they could
possibly do so, the Elders issued a form of
prayer to be used in all
their churches. It was a prayer for
the
kingdom and the
throne.37 But meanwhile others were
taking definite
sides. At Leitmeritz the Catholics and
old-fashioned Utraquists
mustered to fight for the
King; and at Prague the Protestant nobles
met to defend the cause of
religious liberty. They met in
secret at
a Brother's House; they
formed a Committee of Safety of eight, and
of those eight four were
Brethren; and they passed a resolution to
defy the King, and send
help to the German Protestant leader, John
Frederick, Elector of
Saxony.
And then the retribution
fell like a bolt from the blue. The
great
battle of Mühlberg was
fought {April 24th, 1547.}; the Protestant
troops were routed; the
Elector of Saxony was captured; the Emperor
was master of Germany, and
Ferdinand returned to Prague with
vengeance written on his
brow. He called a council at
Prague
Castle, summoned the nobles
and knights before him, ordered them to
deliver up their
treasonable papers, came down on many with heavy
fines, and condemned the
ringleaders to death.
At eight in the morning,
August 22nd, four Barons were led out to
execution in Prague, and
the scaffold was erected in a public place
that all the people might
see and learn a lesson. Among the
Barons
was Wenzel Petipesky, a
member of the Brethren's Church. He
was
to be the first to
die. As he was led from his cell by
the
executioner, he called out
in a loud voice, which could be heard far
and wide: "My dear
Brethren, we go happy in the name of the Lord,
for we go in the narrow
way." He walked to the scaffold
with his
hands bound before him, and
two boys played his dead march on drums.
As he reached the scaffold
the drums ceased, and the executioner
announced that the prisoner
was dying because he had tried to
dethrone King Ferdinand and
put another King in his place.
"That," said Petipesky,
"was never the case."
"Never mind, my Lord,"
roared the executioner, "it will not help you
now."
"My God," said Petipesky,
"I leave all to Thee;" and his head rolled
on the
ground.
But the worst was still to
come. As Ferdinand came out of
the
castle church on Sunday
morning, September 18th, he was met by a
deputation of Utraquists
and Catholics, who besought him to protect
them against the cruelties
inflicted on them by the Picards.
The
King soon eased their
minds. He had heard a rumour that
John
Augusta was the real leader
of the revolt; he regarded the Brethren
as traitors; he no longer
felt bound by his promise to spare them;
and, therefore, reviving
the Edict of St. James, he issued an order
that all their meetings
should be suppressed, all their property be
confiscated, all their
churches be purified and transformed into
Romanist Chapels, and all
their priests be captured and brought to
the castle in Prague {Oct.
8th, 1547.}. The Brethren pleaded
not
guilty.38 They had not, as a body, taken any part
in the conspiracy
against the King. Instead
of plotting against him, in fact, they had
prayed and fasted in every
parish for the kingdom and the throne.
If the King, they
protested, desired to punish the few guilty
Brethren, by all means let
him do so; but let him not crush the
innocent many for the sake
of a guilty few. "My word," replied the
King, "is final." The Brethren continued to protest. And the King
retorted by issuing an
order that all Brethren who lived on Royal
estates must either accept
the Catholic Faith or leave the country
before six weeks were over
{May, 1548.}.
And never was King more
astounded and staggered than Ferdinand at
the result of this
decree.
CHAPTER
IX.
THE BRETHREN IN POLAND,
1548-1570.
It is easy to see what
Ferdinand expected. He had no
desire to shed
more blood; he wished to
see Bohemia at peace; he knew that the
Brethren, with all their
skill, could never sell out in six weeks;
and therefore he hoped
that, like sensible men, they would abandon
their Satanic follies,
consider the comfort of their wives and
children, and nestle snugly
in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But
the Brethren had never
learned the art of dancing to Ferdinand's
piping. As the King would not extend the time,
they took him at his
word. The rich came to the help of the poor,39
and before the six
weeks had flown away a
large band of Brethren had bidden a sad
farewell to their old
familiar haunts and homes, and started on
their journey north across
the pine-clad hills. From
Leitomischl,
Chlumitz and Solnic, by way
of Frankenstein and Breslau, and from
Turnau and
Brandeis-on-the-Adler across the Giant Mountains, they
marched in two main bodies
from Bohemia to Poland. The time
was the
leafy month of June, and
the first part of the journey was pleasant.
"We were borne," says one,
"on eagles' wings." As they
tramped
along the country roads,
with wagons for the women, old men and
children, they made the air
ring with the gladsome music of old
Brethren's hymns and their
march was more like a triumphal
procession than the flight
of persecuted refugees. They were
nearly
two thousand in
number. They had hundreds with
them, both Catholic
and Protestant, to protect
them against the mountain brigands.
They
had guards of infantry and
cavalry. They were freed from toll
at
the turn-pikes. They were supplied with meat, bread,
milk and eggs
by the simple country
peasants. They were publicly
welcomed and
entertained by the Mayor
and Council of Glatz. As the news
of their
approach ran on before, the
good folk in the various towns and
villages would sweep the
streets and clear the road to let them pass
with speed and safety to
their desired haven far away. For
two
months they enjoyed
themselves at Posen, and the Polish nobles
welcomed them as Brothers;
but the Bishop regarded them as wolves in
the flock, and had them
ordered away. From Posen they
marched to
Polish Prussia, and were
ordered away again; and not till the autumn
leaves had fallen and the
dark long nights had come did they find a
home in the town of
Königsberg, in the Lutheran Duchy of East
Prussia.
And even there they were
almost worried to death. As they
settled
down as peaceful citizens
in this Protestant land of light and
liberty, they found, to
their horror and dismay, that Lutherans,
when it suited their
purpose, could be as bigoted as Catholics.
They were forced to accept
the Confession of Augsburg. They
were
forbidden to ordain their
own priests or practise their own peculiar
customs. They were treated, not as Protestant
brothers, but as
highly suspicious
foreigners; and a priest of the Brethren was not
allowed to visit a member
of his flock unless he took a Lutheran
pastor with him. "If you
stay with us," said Speratus, the
Superintendent of the East
Prussian Lutheran Church, "you must
accommodate yourselves to
our ways. Nobody sent for you;
nobody
asked you to come." If the Brethren, in a word, were to stay
in
East Prussia, they must
cease to be Brethren at all, and allow
themselves to be absorbed
by the conquering Lutherans of the land.
Meanwhile, however, they
had a Moses to lead them out of the desert.
George Israel is a type of
the ancient Brethren. He was the
son of
a blacksmith, was a close
friend of Augusta, had been with him at
Wittenberg, and was now the
second great leader of the Brethren.
When Ferdinand issued his
decree, Israel, like many of the
Brethren's Ministers, was
summoned to Prague to answer for his faith
and conduct on pain of a
fine of one thousand ducats; and when some
of his friends advised him
to disobey the summons, and even offered
to pay the money, he gave
one of those sublime answers which light
up the gloom of the time.
"No," he replied, "I have been purchased
once and for all with the
blood of Christ, and will not consent to
be ransomed with the gold
and silver of my people. Keep what
you
have, for you will need it
in your flight, and pray for me that I
may be steadfast in
suffering for Jesus." He went to
Prague,
confessed his faith, and
was thrown into the White Tower.
But he
was loosely guarded, and
one day, disguised as a clerk, with a pen
behind his ear, and paper
and ink-horn in his hand, he walked out of
the Tower in broad daylight
through the midst of his guards, and
joined the Brethren in
Prussia. He was just the man to
guide the
wandering band, and the
Council appointed him leader of the
emigrants. He was energetic and brave. He could speak the
Polish
tongue. He had a clear head and strong
limbs. For him a
cold
lodging in Prussia was not
enough. He would lead his Brethren
to a
better land, and give them
nobler work to do.
As the Brethren had already
been driven from Poland, the task which
Israel now undertook
appeared an act of folly. But
George Israel
knew better. For a hundred years the people of Poland
had
sympathised to some extent
with the reforming movement in Bohemia.
There Jerome of Prague had
taught. There the teaching of Hus
had
spread. There the people hated the Church of
Rome. There the nobles
sent their sons to study
under Luther at Wittenberg. There
the
works of Luther and Calvin
had been printed and spread in secret.
There, above all, the Queen
herself had been privately taught the
Protestant faith by her own
father-confessor. And there,
thought
Israel, the Brethren in
time would find a hearty welcome.
And so,
while still retaining the
oversight of a few parishes in East
Prussia, George Israel, by
commission of the Council, set out to
conduct a mission in Poland
{1551.}. Alone and on horseback, by
bad
roads and swollen streams,
he went on his dangerous journey; and on
the fourth Sunday in Lent
arrived at the town of Thorn, and rested
for the day. Here occurred the famous incident on the
ice which
made his name remembered in
Thorn for many a year to come. As
he
was walking on the frozen
river to try whether the ice was strong
enough to bear his horse,
the ice broke up with a crash.
George
Israel was left on a
solitary lump, and was swept whirling down the
river; and then, as the ice
blocks cracked and banged and splintered
into thousands of
fragments, he sprang like a deer from block to
block, and sang with loud
exulting voice: "Praise the Lord from the
earth, ye dragons and all
deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapour,
stormy wind fulfilling his
word." There was a great crowd on
the
bank. The people watched the thrilling sight
with awe, and when at
last he reached firm ground
they welcomed him with shouts of joy.
We marvel not that such a
man was like the sword of Gideon in the
conflict. He rode on to Posen, the capital of
Great Poland, began
holding secret meetings,
and established the first evangelical
church in the country. The Roman Catholic Bishop heard of
his
arrival, and put forty
assassins on his track. But Israel
was a man
of many wiles as well as a
man of God. He assumed disguises, and
changed his clothes so as
to baffle pursuit, appearing now as an
officer, now as a coachman,
now as a cook. He presented himself
at
the castle of the noble
family of the Ostrorogs, was warmly welcomed
by the Countess, and held a
service in her rooms. The Count
was
absent, heard the news, and
came in a state of fury. He seized
a
whip. "I will drag my wife
out of this conventicle," he exclaimed;
and burst into the room
while the service was proceeding, his eyes
flashing fire and the whip
swinging in his hand. The
preacher,
Cerwenka, calmly went on
preaching. "Sir," said George Israel,
pointing to an empty seat
"sit down there." The Count of
Ostrorog
meekly obeyed, listened
quietly to the discourse, became a convert
that very day, turned out
his own Lutheran Court Chaplain, installed
George Israel in his place,
and made a present to the Brethren of
his great estate on the
outskirts of the town.
For the Brethren the gain
was enormous. As the news of the
Count's
conversion spread, other
nobles quickly followed suit. The
town of
Ostrorog became the centre
of a swiftly growing movement; the poor
Brethren in Prussia
returned to Poland, and found churches ready for
their use; and before seven
years had passed away the Brethren had
founded forty congregations
in this their first land of exile.
They had, however, another
great mission to fulfil. As the
Brethren
spread from town to town,
they discovered that the other Protestant
bodies--the Lutherans,
Zwinglians and Calvinists--were almost as
fond of fighting with each
other as of denouncing the Church of
Rome; and therefore the
people, longing for peace, were disgusted
more or less with them
all. But the Brethren stood on a
rather
different footing. They were cousins to the Poles in blood;
they
had no fixed and definite
creed; they thought far more of brotherly
love than of orthodoxy in
doctrine; and therefore the idea was early
broached that the Church of
the Brethren should be established as
the National Church of
Poland. The idea grew. The Lutherans,
Zwinglians, Calvinists and
Brethren drew closer and closer together.
They exchanged confessions,
discussed each other's doctrines, met
in learned consultations,
and held united synods again and again.
For fifteen years the
glorious vision of a union of all the
Protestants in Poland hung
like glittering fruit just out of reach.
There were many walls in
the way. Each church wanted to be
the
leading church in Poland;
each wanted its own confession to be the
bond of union; each wanted
its own form of service, its own form of
government, to be accepted
by all. But soon one and all began
to
see that the time had come
for wranglings to cease. The
Jesuits
were gaining ground in
Poland. The Protestant Kingdom must
no
longer be divided against
itself.
At last the Brethren, the
real movers of the scheme, persuaded all
to assemble in the great
United Synod of Sendomir, and all
Protestants in Poland felt
that the fate of the country depended on
the issue of the meeting
{1570.}. It was the greatest Synod
that
had ever been held in
Poland. It was an attempt to start
a new
movement in the history of
the Reformation, an attempt to fling out
the apple of discord and
unite all Protestants in one grand army
which should carry the
enemy's forts by storm. At first
the goal
seemed further off than
ever. As the Calvinists were the
strongest
body, they confidently
demanded that their Confession should be
accepted, and put forward
the telling argument that it was already
in use in the country. As the Lutherans were the next
strongest
body, they offered the
Augsburg Confession, and both parties turned
round upon the Brethren,
and accused them of having so many
Confessions that no one
knew which to take. And then
young
Turnovius, the
representative of the Brethren, rose to speak. The
Brethren, he said, had only
one Confession in Poland. They
had
presented that Confession
to the King; they believed that it was
suited best to the special
needs of the country, and yet they would
accept the Calvinists'
Confession as long as they might keep their
own as
well.
There was a deadlock. What was to be done? The Brethren's work
seemed about to come to
nought. Debates and speeches were
in vain.
Each party remained firm as
a rock. And then, in wondrous
mystic
wise, the tone of the
gathering softened.
"For God's sake, for God's
sake," said the Palatine of Sendomir in
his speech, "remember what
depends upon the result of our
deliberations, and incline
your hearts to that harmony and love
which the Lord has
commanded us to follow above all things."
As the Palatine ended his
speech he burst into tears. His
friend,
the Palatine of Cracow,
sobbed aloud. Forthwith the angry
clouds
disparted and revealed the
bow of peace, the obstacles to union
vanished, and the members
of the Synod agreed to draw up a new
Confession, which should
give expression to the united faith of all.
The Confession was prepared
{April 14th.}. It is needless
to
trouble about the doctrinal
details. For us the important point
to
notice is the spirit of
union displayed. For the first, but
not for
the last, time in the
history of Poland the Evangelical Protestants
agreed to sink their
differences on points of dispute, and unite
their forces in common
action against alike the power of Rome and
the Unitarian40 sects of
the day. The joy was
universal. The
scene
in the hall at Sendomir was
inspiring. When the Committee laid
the
Confession before the Synod
all the members arose and sang the
Ambrosian Te Deum. With
outstretched hands the Lutherans advanced to
meet the Brethren, and with
outstretched hands the Brethren advanced
to meet the Lutherans. The next step was to make the union
public.
For this purpose the
Brethren, a few weeks later, formed a
procession one Sunday
morning and attended service at the Lutheran
Church; and then, in the
afternoon, the Lutherans attended service
in the Church of the
Brethren {May 28th, 1570.}. It is
hard to
believe that all this was
empty show. And yet the truth must
be
confessed that this "Union
of Sendomir" was by no means the
beautiful thing that some
writers have imagined. It was the
result,
to a very large extent, not
of any true desire for unity, but rather
of an attempt on the part
of the Polish nobles to undermine the
influence and power of the
clergy. It led to no permanent
union of
the Protestants in
Poland. Its interest is sentimental
rather than
historic. For the time--but for a very short time
only--the
Brethren had succeeded in
teaching others a little charity of
spirit, and had thus shown
their desire to hasten the day when the
Churches of Christ, no
longer asunder, shall know "how good and how
pleasant it is for Brethren
to dwell together in unity."
And all this--this attempt
at unity, this second home for the
Brethren, this new
Evangelical movement in Poland--was the strange
result of the edict issued
by Ferdinand, King of Bohemia.
CHAPTER
X.
THE MARTYR-BISHOP,
1548-1560.
Meanwhile, John Augusta,
the great leader of the Brethren, was
passing through the furnace
of affliction.
Of all the tools employed
by Ferdinand, the most crafty, active and
ambitious was a certain
officer named Sebastian Schöneich, who, in
the words of the great
historian, Gindely, was one of those men
fitted by nature for the
post of hangman.
For some months this man
had distinguished himself by his zeal in
the cause of the King. He
had seized sixteen heads of families for
singing hymns at a baker's
funeral, had thrown them into the
drain-vaults of the White
Tower at Prague, and had left them there
to mend their ways in the
midst of filth and horrible stenches.
And
now he occupied the proud
position of town-captain of Leitomischl.
Never yet had he known such
a golden chance of covering himself
with glory. For some time Augusta, who was now First
Senior of the
Church, had been hiding in
the neighbouring woods, and only two or
three Brethren knew his
exact abode. But already
persecution had
done her work, and
treachery now did hers.
Among the inhabitants of
Leitomischl were certain renegade Brethren,
and these now said to the
Royal Commissioners: "If the King could
only capture and torture
Augusta, he could unearth the whole
conspiracy."
"Where is Augusta?" asked
the Commissioners.
"He is not at home,"
replied the traitors, "but if you will ask his
friend, Jacob Bilek, he
will tell you all you want to know."
The wily Schöneich laid his
plot. If only he could capture
Augusta,
he would win the favour of
the King and fill his own pockets with
money. As he strolled one day through the
streets of Leitomischl he
met a certain innocent
Brother Henry, and there and then began his
deadly
work.
"If you know," he said,
"where Augusta is, tell him I desire an
interview with him. I will meet him wherever he likes. I have
something special to say to
him, something good, not only for him,
but for the whole
Brethren's Church. But breathe not
a word of this
to anyone else. Not a soul--not even yourself--must know
about the
matter."
The message to Augusta was
sent. He replied that he would
grant the
interview on condition that
Schöneich would guarantee his personal
safety.
"That," replied Schöneich,
"is quite impossible. I cannot give
any
security whatever. The whole business must be perfectly
secret.
Not a soul must be present
but Augusta and myself. I wouldn't
have
the King know about this
for a thousand groschen. Tell
Augusta not
to be afraid of me. I have no instructions concerning
him. He can
come with an easy mind to
Leitomischl. If he will not trust
me as
far as that, let him name
the place himself, and I will go though it
be a dozen miles
away."
But Augusta still returned
the same answer, and Schöneich had to
strengthen his plea. Again he met the guileless Brother
Henry, and
again he stormed him with
his eloquent tongue.
"Have you no better answer
from Augusta?" he asked.
"No," replied Brother
Henry.
"My dear, my only Henry,"
pleaded Schöneich, "I do so long for a
little chat with
Augusta. My heart bleeds with
sympathy for you.
I
am expecting the King's
Commissioners. They may be here any
moment.
It will go hard with you
poor folk when they come. If only I
could
have a talk with Augusta,
it would be so much better for you all.
But do tell him not to be
afraid of me. I have no
instructions
concerning him. I will wager my neck for that," he said,
putting
his finger to his throat.
"I am willing to give my life for you poor
Brethren."
The shot went home. As Augusta lay in his safe retreat he
had
written stirring letters to
the Brethren urging them to be true to
their colours; and now, he
heard from his friends in Leitomischl
that Schöneich was an
evangelical saint, and that if he would only
confer with the saint he
might render his Brethren signal service,
and deliver them from their
distresses. He responded nobly to
the
appeal. For the sake of the Church he had led so
long, he would
risk his liberty and his
life. In vain the voice of prudence
said
"Stay!"; the voice of love
said "Go!"; and Augusta agreed to meet
the Captain in a wood three
miles from the town. The
Captain
chuckled. The time was fixed, and, the night
before, the artful
plotter sent three of his
trusty friends to lie in wait. As
the
morning broke of the
fateful day {April 25th, 1548.}, Augusta, still
suspecting a trap, sent his
secretary, Jacob Bilek, in advance to
spy the land; and the three
brave men sprang out upon him and
carried him off to
Schöneich. And then, at the
appointed hour, came
John Augusta himself. He had dressed himself as a country
peasant,
carried a hoe in is hand,
and strolled in the woodland whistling a
merry tune. For the moment the hirelings were
baffled. They
seized
him and let him go; they
seized him again and let him go again; they
seized him, for the third
time, searched him, and found a fine
handkerchief in his
bosom.
"Ah," said one of them, "a
country peasant does not use a
handkerchief like
this."
The game was up. Augusta stood revealed, and Schöneich,
hearing the
glorious news, came
prancing up on his horse.
"My lord," said Augusta,
"is this what you call faith?"
"Did you never hear," said
Schöneich, "that promises made in the
night are never
binding? Did you never hear of a
certain Jew with
his red beard and yellow
bag? Did you never hear of the
mighty
power of money? And where have you come from this
morning? I
hear
you have plenty of money in
your possession. Where is that
money
now?"
As they rode next day in a
covered waggon on their way to the city
of Prague, the Captain
pestered Augusta with many questions.
"My dear Johannes," said
the jovial wag, "where have you been?
With
whom? Where are your letters and your
clothes? Whose is this
cap?
Where did you get it? Who lent it to you? What do they call
him?
Where does he live? Where is your horse? Where is your
money?
Where are your
companions?"
"Why do you ask so many
questions?" asked Augusta.
"Because," replied
Schöneich, letting out the murder, "I want to be
able to give information
about you. I don't want to be
called a
donkey or a
calf."
And now began for John
Augusta a time of terrible testing.
As the
Captain rapped his
questions out he was playing his part in a deadly
game that involved the
fate, not only of the Brethren's Church, but
of all evangelicals in the
land.
For months King Ferdinand
had longed to capture Augusta.
He
regarded him as the author
of the Smalkald League; he regarded him
as the deadliest foe of the
Catholic faith in Europe; he regarded
the peaceful Brethren as
rebels of the vilest kind; and now that he
had Augusta in his power he
determined to make him confess the plot,
and then, with the proof he
desired in his hands, he would stamp out
the Brethren's Church for
once and all.
For this purpose Augusta
was now imprisoned in the White Tower at
Prague. He was placed in the wine vaults below
the castle, had
heavy fetters on his hands
and feet, and sat for days in a crunched
position. The historic contest began. For two hours at a
stretch
the King's examiners
riddled Augusta with questions. "Who sent the
letter to the King?"41 they
asked. "Where do the Brethren keep their
papers and money? To whom did the Brethren turn for help
when the
King called on his subjects
to support him? Who went with you
to
Wittenberg? For what and for whom did the Brethren
pray."
"They prayed," said
Augusta, "that God would incline the heart of
the King to be gracious to
us."
"By what means did the
Brethren defend themselves?"
"By patience," replied
Augusta.
"To whom did they apply for
help?"
Augusta pointed to
heaven.
As Augusta's answers to all
these questions were not considered
satisfactory, they next
endeavoured to sharpen his wits by torturing
a German coiner in his
presence; and when this mode of persuasion
failed, they tortured
Augusta himself. They stripped him
naked.
They stretched him face
downwards on a ladder. They smeared
his
hips with boiling
pitch. They set the spluttering
mess on fire, and
drew it off, skin and all,
with a pair of tongs. They screwed
him
tightly in the stocks. They hung him up to the ceiling by a
hook,
with the point run through
his flesh. They laid him flat upon
his
back and pressed great
stones on his stomach. It was all
in vain.
Again they urged him to
confess the part that he and the Brethren
had played in the great
revolt, and again Augusta bravely replied
that the Brethren had taken
no such part at all.
At this the King himself
intervened. For some months he had
been
busy enough at Augsburg,
assisting the Emperor in his work; but now
he sent a letter to Prague,
with full instructions how to deal with
Augusta. If gentle measures did not succeed, then
sterner measures,
said he, must be
employed. He had three new tortures
to suggest.
First, he said, let Augusta
be watched and deprived of sleep for
five or six days. Next, he must be strapped to a shutter,
with his
head hanging over one end;
he must have vinegar rubbed into his
nostrils; he must have a
beetle fastened on to his stomach; and in
this position, with his
neck aching, his nostrils smarting, and the
beetle working its way to
his vitals, he must be kept for two days
and two nights. And, third, if these measures did not
act, he must
be fed with highly seasoned
food and allowed nothing to drink.
But these suggestions were
never carried out. As the
messenger
hastened with the King's
billet-doux, and the Brethren on the
northern frontier were
setting out for Poland, Augusta and Bilek
were on their way to the
famous old castle of Pürglitz. For
ages
that castle, built on a
rock, and hidden away in darkling woods, had
been renowned in Bohemian
lore. There the mother of Charles
IV. had
heard the nightingales
sing; there the faithful, ran the story, had
held John Ziska at bay;
there had many a rebel suffered in the
terrible "torture-tower";
and there Augusta and his faithful friend
were to lie for many a long
and weary day.
They were taken to Pürglitz
in two separate waggons. They
travelled
by night and arrived about
mid-day; they were placed in two separate
cells, and for sixteen
years the fortunes of the Brethren centred
round Pürglitz
Castle.
If the Bishop had been the
vilest criminal, he could not have been
more grossly insulted. For two years he had to share his cell
with
a vulgar German coiner; and
the coiner, in facetious pastime, often
smote him on the
head.
His cell was almost
pitch-dark. The window was
shuttered within and
without, and the merest
glimmer from the cell next door struggled in
through a chink four inches
broad. At meals alone he was
permitted
half a candle. For bedding he had a leather bolster, a
coverlet and
what Germans call a
"bed-sack." For food he was allowed
two rations
of meat, two hunches of
bread, and two jugs of barley-beer a day.
His shirt was washed about
once a fortnight, his face and hands
twice a week, his head
twice a year, and the rest of his body never.
He was not allowed the use
of a knife and fork. He was not
allowed
to speak to the prison
attendants. He had no books, no
papers, no
ink, no news of the world
without; and there for three years he sat
in the dark, as lonely as
the famous prisoner of Chillon.
Again, by
the King's command, he was
tortured, with a gag in his mouth to
stifle his screams and a
threat that if he would not confess he
should have an interview
with the hangman; and again he refused to
deny his Brethren, and was
flung back into his corner.
The delivering angel came
in humble guise. Among the warders
who
guarded his cell was a
daring youth who had lived at Leitomischl.
He had been brought up
among the Brethren. He regarded the
Bishop
as a martyr. His wife lived in a cottage near the
castle; and now,
drunken rascal though he
was, he risked his life for Augusta's sake,
used his cottage as a
secret post office, and handed in to the
suffering Bishop letters,
books, ink, paper, pens, money and
candles.
The Brethren stationed a
priest in Pürglitz village. The
great
Bishop was soon as bright
and active as ever. By day he
buried his
tools in the ground; by
night he plugged every chink and cranny, and
applied himself to his
labours. Not yet was his spirit
broken; not
yet was his mind
unhinged. As his candle burned in
that gloomy
dungeon in the silent
watches of the night, so the fire of his
genius shone anew in those
darksome days of trial and persecution;
and still he urged his
afflicted Brethren to be true to the faith of
their fathers, to hold fast
the Apostles' Creed, and to look onward
to the brighter day when
once again their pathway would shine as the
wings of a dove that are
covered with silver and her feathers with
yellow gold. He comforted Bilek in his affliction; he
published a
volume of sermons for the
elders to read in secret; he composed a
number of stirring and
triumphant hymns; and there he penned the
noble words still sung in
the Brethren's Church:--
Praise God for
ever.
Boundless is his
favour,
To his Church and chosen
flock,
Founded on Christ the
Rock.
As he lay in his cell he
pondered much on the sad fate of his
Brethren. At one time he heard a rumour that the
Church was almost
extinct. Some, he knew, had fled to Poland. Some had settled in
Moravia. Some, robbed of lands and houses, were
roaming the country
as pedlars or earning a
scanty living as farm labourers.
And some,
alas! had lowered the flag
and joined the Church of Rome.
And yet Augusta had never
abandoned hope. For ten years,
despite a
few interruptions, he kept
in almost constant touch, not only with
his own Brethren, but also
with the Protestant world at large.
He
was still, he thought, the
loved and honoured leader; he was still
the mightiest religious
force in the land; and now, in his dungeon,
he sketched a plan to heal
his country's woes and form the true
disciples of Christ into
one grand national Protestant army against
which both Pope and Emperor
would for ever contend in vain.
CHAPTER
Xl.
THE LAST DAYS OF AUGUSTA,
1560-1572.
To Augusta the prospect
seemed hopeful. Great changes had
taken
place in the Protestant
world. The Lutherans in Germany
had
triumphed. The religious peace of Augsburg had been
consummated,
The German Protestants had
now a legal standing. The great
Emperor,
Charles V., had resigned
his throne. His successor was his
brother
Ferdinand, the late King of
Bohemia. The new King of Bohemia
was
Ferdinand's eldest son,
Maximilian I. Maximilian was well disposed
towards Protestants, and
persecution in Bohemia died away.
And now the Brethren
plucked up heart again. They
rebuilt their
chapel at their
headquarters, Jungbunzlau. They
presented a copy of
their Hymn-book to the
King. They divided the Church into three
provinces--Bohemia, Moravia
and Poland. They appointed
George
Israel First Senior in
Poland, John Czerny First Senior in Bohemia
and Moravia, and Cerwenka
secretary to the whole Church.
But the Brethren had gone
further still. As Augusta was the
sole
surviving Bishop in the
Church, the Brethren were in a difficulty.
They must not be without
Bishops. But what were they to
do? Were
they to wait till Augusta
was set at liberty, or were they to elect
new Bishops without his
authority? They chose the latter
course,
and Augusta was deeply
offended. They elected Czerny and
Cerwenka
to the office of Bishops;
they had them consecrated as Bishops by
two Brethren in priests'
orders; and they actually allowed the two
new Bishops to consecrate
two further Bishops, George Israel and
Blahoslaw, the Church
Historian.
And even this was not the
worst of the story. As he lay in
his
dungeon forming plans for
the Church he loved so well, it slowly
dawned upon Augusta that
his Brethren were ceasing to trust him, and
that the sun of his power,
which had shone so brightly, was now
sloping slowly to its
setting. He heard of one change
after another
taking place without his
consent. He heard that the Council
had
condemned his sermons as
too learned and dry for the common people,
and that they had altered
them to suit their own opinions. He
heard
that his hymns, which he
had desired to see in the new Hymn-book,
had been mangled in a
similar manner. His Brethren did
not even
tell him what they were
doing. They simply left him out in
the
cold. What he himself heard he heard by
chance, and that was the
"most unkind cut of
all." His authority was gone; his
position was
lost; his hopes were
blasted; and his early guidance, his
entreaties, his services,
his sufferings were all, he thought,
forgotten by an ungrateful
Church.
As Augusta heard of all
these changes, a glorious vision rose before
his mind. At first he was offended, quarrelled
with the Brethren,
and declared the new
Bishops invalid. But at last his
better
feelings gained the
mastery. He would not sulk like a
petted child;
he would render his
Brethren the greatest service in his power. He
would fight his way to
liberty; he would resume his place on the
bridge, and before long he
would make the Church the national Church
of
Bohemia.
The door was opened by a
duke. The Archduke Ferdinand,
brother of
the King, came to reside at
Pürglitz {1560.}. Augusta appealed
for
liberty to Ferdinand; the
Archduke referred the matter to the King;
the King referred the
matter to the clergy; and the clergy drew up
for Augusta's benefit a
form of recantation. The issue
before him
was now perfectly
clear. There was one road to
freedom and one
only. He must sign the form of recantation in
full. The form
was
drastic. He must renounce all his previous
religious opinions.
He
must acknowledge the Holy
Catholic Church and submit to her in all
things. He must eschew the gatherings of
Waldenses, Picards and all
other apostates, denounce
their teaching as depraved, and recognise
the Church of Rome as the
one true Church of Christ. He must
labour
for the unity of the Church
and endeavour to bring his Brethren into
the fold. He must never again interpret the
Scriptures according to
his own understanding, but
submit rather to the exposition and
authority of the Holy Roman
Church, which alone was fit to decide on
questions of doctrine. He must do his duty by the King, obey
him
and serve him with zeal as
a loyal subject. And finally he
must
write out the whole
recantation with his own hand, take a public
oath to keep it, and have
it signed and sealed by witnesses.
Augusta refused point
blank. His hopes of liberty
vanished. His
heart sank in despair.
"They might as well," said Bilek, his friend,
"have asked him to walk on
his head."
But here Lord Sternberg,
Governor of the Castle, suggested another
path. If Augusta, said he, would not join the
Church of Rome,
perhaps he would at least
join the Utraquists. He had been
a
Utraquist in his youth; the
Brethren were Utraquists under another
name; and all that Augusta
had to do was to give himself his proper
name, and his dungeon door
would fly open. Of all the devices
to
entrap Augusta, this
well-meant trick was the most enticing.
The
argument was a shameless
logical juggle. The Utraquists
celebrated
the communion in both
kinds; the Brethren celebrated the communion
in both kinds; therefore
the Brethren were Utraquists.42 At
first
Augusta himself appeared to
be caught.
"I, John Augusta," he
wrote, "confess myself a member of the whole
Evangelical Church, which,
wherever it may be, receives the body and
blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ in both kinds. I swear that,
along
with the Holy Catholic
Church, I will maintain true submission and
obedience to her chief
Head, Jesus Christ. I will order my
life
according to God's holy
word and the truth of his pure Gospel.
I
will be led by Him, obey
Him alone, and by no other human thoughts
and inventions. I renounce all erroneous and wicked
opinions
against the holy universal
Christian apostolic faith. I will
never
take any part in the
meetings of Picards or other heretics."
If Augusta thought that by
language like this he would catch his
examiners napping, he was
falling into a very grievous error.
He
had chosen his words with
care. He never said what he meant
by the
Utraquists. He never said whether he would include
the Brethren
among the Utraquists or
among the Picards and heretics. And
he had
never made any reference to
the Pope.
His examiners were far too
clever to be deceived. Instead
of
recommending that Augusta
be now set at liberty, they contended that
his recantation was no
recantation at all. He had shown
no
inclination, they said,
towards either Rome or Utraquism.
His
principles were remarkably
like those of Martin Luther. He had
not
acknowledged the supremacy
of the Pope, and when he said he would
not be led by any human
inventions he was plainly repudiating the
Church of Rome. What is the
good, they asked, of Augusta's promising
to resist heretics when he
does not acknowledge the Brethren to be
heretics? "It is," they
said, "as clear as day that John Augusta has
no real intention of
renouncing his errors." Let the man
say
straight out to which party
he belonged.
Again Augusta tried to
fence, and again he met his match.
Instead
of saying in plain language
to which party he belonged, he persisted
in his first assertion that
he belonged to the Catholic Evangelical
Church, which was now split
into various sects. But as the old
man
warmed to his work he threw
caution aside.
"I have never," he said,
"had anything to do with Waldenses or
Picards. I belong to the general Evangelical
Church, which enjoys
the Communion in both
kinds. I renounce entirely the
Popish sect
known as the Holy Roman
Church. I deny that the Pope is the
Vicar
of Christ. I deny that the Church of Rome alone has
authority to
interpret the
Scriptures. If the Church of Rome
claims such
authority, she must first
show that she is free from the spirit of
the world, and possesses
the spirit of charity, and until that is
done I refuse to bow to her
decrees."
He defended the Church of
the Brethren with all his might. It
was,
he said, truly
evangelical. It was Catholic. It was apostolic. It
was recognised and praised
by Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Bucer,
Bullinger and other
saints. As long as the moral life
of the Church
of Rome remained at such a
low ebb, so long would there be need for
the Brethren's
Church.
"If the Church of Rome will
mend her ways, the Brethren," said he,
"will return to her fold;
but till that blessed change takes place
they will remain where they
are."
He denied being a traitor.
"If any one says that I have been
disloyal to the Emperor, I
denounce that person as a liar. If
his
Majesty knew how loyal I
have been, he would not keep me here
another hour. I know why I am suffering. I am suffering, not as
an
evil-doer, but as a
Christian."
The first skirmish was
over. The clergy were firm, and
Augusta sank
back exhausted in his
cell. But the kindly Governor was
still
resolved to smooth the way
for his prisoners. "I will not rest," he
said, "till I see them at
liberty." He suggested that
Augusta
should have an interview
with the Jesuits!
"What would be the good of
that?" said Augusta. "I should be like a
little dog in the midst of
a pack of lions. I pray you, let
these
negotiations cease. I would rather stay where I am. It is clear
there is no escape for me
unless I am false to my honour and my
conscience. I will never recant nor act against my
conscience.
May
God help me to keep true
till death."
At last, however, Augusta
gave way, attended Mass, with Bilek, in
the castle chapel, and
consented to an interview with the Jesuits,
on condition that Bilek
should go with him, and that he should also
be allowed another
interview with the Utraquists {1561.}.
The day
for the duel arrived. The chosen spot was the new Jesuit
College at
Prague. As they drove to the city both Augusta
and Bilek were
allowed to stretch their
limbs and even get out of sight of their
guards. At Prague they were allowed a dip in the
Royal Bath. It was
the first bath they had had
for fourteen years, and the people came
from far and near to gaze
upon their scars.
And now, being fresh and
clean in body, Augusta, the stubborn
heretical Picard, was to be
made clean in soul. As the Jesuits
were
determined to do their work
well, they laid down the strict
condition that no one but
themselves must be allowed to speak with
the prisoners. For the rest the prisoners were treated
kindly. The
bedroom was neat; the food
was good; the large, bright dining-room
had seven windows. They had wine to dinner, and were waited
on by a
discreet and silent
butler. Not a word did that solemn
functionary
utter. If the Brethren made a remark to him, he
laid his fingers on
his lips like the witches
in Macbeth.
The great debate
began. The Jesuit spokesman was Dr.
Henry Blissem.
He opened by making a clean
breast of the whole purpose of the
interview.
"It is well known to you
both," said he, "for what purpose you have
been handed over to our
care, that we, if possible, may help you to
a right understanding of
the Christian faith."
If the Jesuits could have
had their way, they would have had
Augusta's answers set down
in writing. But here Augusta stood
firm
as a rock. He knew the game the Jesuits were
playing. The
interview was of national
importance. If his answers
were
considered satisfactory,
the Jesuits would have them printed, sow
them broadcast, and boast
of his conversion; and if, on the other
hand, they were
unsatisfactory, they would send them to the Emperor
as proof that Augusta was a
rebel, demand his instant execution, and
start another persecution
of the Brethren.
Dr. Henry, made the first
pass.
"The Holy Universal
Church," he said, "is the true bride of Christ
and the true mother of all
Christians."
Augusta politely
agreed.
"On this is question," he
said, "our own party thinks and believes
exactly as you
do."
"No one," continued the
doctor suavely, "can believe in God who does
not think correctly of the
Holy Church, and regard her as his
mother; and without the
Church there is no salvation."
Again Augusta politely
agreed, and again the learned Jesuit beamed
with pleasure. Now came the tug of
war.
"This Holy Christian
Church," said Blissem, "has never erred and
cannot
err."
Augusta met this with a
flat denial. If he surrendered here
he
surrendered all, and would
be untrue to his Brethren. If he
once
agreed that the Church was
infallible he was swallowing the whole
Roman pill. In vain the doctor argued. Augusta held his
ground.
The Jesuits reported him
hard in the head, and had him sent back to
his
cell.
For two more years he
waited in despair, and then he was brought to
the White Tower again, and
visited by two Utraquist Priests,
Mystopol and Martin. His last chance, they told him, had
now
arrived. They had come as messengers from the
Archduke Ferdinand
and from the Emperor
himself.
"I know," said one of them,
"on what you are relying and how you
console yourself, but I
warn you it will avail you nothing."
"You know no secrets," said
Augusta.
"What secrets?" queried
Mystopol.
"Neither divine nor
mine. My dear administrators, your
visit is
quite a surprise! With regard to the recantation, however,
let me
say at once, I shall not
sign it! I have never been guilty
of any
errors, and have nothing to
recant. I made my public confession
of
faith before the lords and
knights of Bohemia twenty-eight years
ago. It was shown to the Emperor at Vienna,
and no one has ever
found anything wrong with
it."
"How is it," said Mystopol,
"you cannot see your error? You
know it
says in our confession, 'I
believe in the Holy Catholic Church.'
You Brethren have fallen
away from that Church. You are not
true
members of the body. You are an ulcer. You are a scab. You have
no sacraments. You have written bloodthirsty pamphlets
against us.
We have a whole box full of
your productions."
"We never wrote any
tracts," said Augusta, "except to show why we
separated from you, but you
urged on the Government against us.
You
likened me to a bastard and
to Goliath the Philistine.
Your
petition read as if it had
been written in a brothel."
And now the character of
John Augusta shone forth in all its
grandeur. The old man was on his
mettle.
"Of all Christians known to
me," he said, "the Brethren stick
closest to Holy Writ. Next
to them come the Lutherans; next to the
Lutherans the Utraquists;
and next to the Utraquists the---!"
But there in common honesty
he had to stop. And then he turned
the
tables on Mystopol, and
came out boldly with his scheme. It
was no
new idea of his. He had already, in 1547, advocated a
National
Protestant Church composed
of Utraquists and Brethren. Instead
of
the Brethren joining the
Utraquists, it was, said Augusta, the plain
duty of the Utraquists to
break from the Church of Rome and join the
Brethren. For the last forty years the Utraquists
had been really
Lutherans at heart. He wanted them now to be true to their
own
convictions. He wanted them to carry out in practice
the teaching
of most of their
preachers. He wanted them to run
the risk of
offending the Emperor and
the Pope. He wanted them to ally
themselves with the
Brethren; and he believed that if they would
only do so nearly every
soul in Bohemia would join the new
Evangelical movement. De Schweinitz says that Augusta betrayed
his
Brethren, and that when he
called himself a Utraquist he was playing
with words. I cannot accept this verdict. He explained clearly
and
precisely what he meant; he
was a Utraquist in the same sense as
Luther; and the castle he
had built in the air was nothing less than
a grand international union
of all the Evangelical Christians in
Europe.
"My lords," he pleaded in
golden words, "let us cease this mutual
accusation of each
other. Let us cease our destructive
quarrelling.
Let us join in seeking
those higher objects which we both have in
common, and let us remember
that we are both of one origin, one
nation, one blood and one
spirit. Think of it, dear lords,
and try
to find some way to
union."
The appeal was pathetic and
sincere. It fell on adders'
ears. His
scheme found favour neither
with Brethren nor with Utraquists.
To
the Brethren Augusta was a
Jesuitical juggler. To the
Utraquists he
was a supple athlete trying
to dodge his way out of prison.
"You shift about," wrote
the Brethren, "in a most remarkable manner.
You make out the Utraquist
Church to be different from what it
really is, in order to keep
a door open through which you may go."
In their judgment he was
nothing less than an ambitious schemer.
If his scheme were carried
out, they said, he would not only be
First Elder of the
Brethren's Church, but administrator of the whole
united
Church.
At last, however, King
Maximilian interceded with the Emperor in his
favour, and Augusta was set
free on the one condition that he would
not preach in public
{1564.}. His hair was white; his
beard was
long; his brow was
furrowed; his health was shattered; and he spent
his last days amongst the
Brethren, a defeated and broken-hearted
man. He was restored to his old position as
First Elder; he settled
down again at Jungbunzlau;
and yet somehow the old confidence was
never completely
restored. In vain he upheld his
daring scheme of
union. John Blahoslaw opposed him to the
teeth. For the time,
at
least, John Blahoslaw was
in the right. Augusta throughout
had made
one fatal blunder. As the Utraquists were now more
Protestant in
doctrine he thought that
they had begun to love the Brethren.
The
very contrary was the
case. If two people agree in nine
points out
of ten, and only differ in
one, they will often quarrel more
fiercely with each other
than if they disagreed in all the ten.
And
that was just what happened
in Bohemia. The more Protestant
the
Utraquists became in
doctrine, the more jealous they were of the
Brethren. And thus Augusta was honoured by neither
party.
Despised
by friend and foe alike,
the old white-haired Bishop tottered to the
silent tomb. "He kept out
of our way," says the sad old record, "as
long as he could; he had
been among us long enough." As we
think of
the noble life he lived,
and the bitter gall of his eventide, we may
liken him to one of those
majestic mountains which tower in grandeur
under the noontide sun, but
round whose brows the vapours gather as
night settles down on the
earth. In the whole gallery of
Bohemian
portraits there is none,
says Gindely, so noble in expression as
his; and as we gaze on
those grand features we see dignity blended
with sorrow, and pride with
heroic fire.43
CHAPTER
XII.
THE GOLDEN AGE,
1572-1603.
As the Emperor Maximilian
II. set out from the Royal Castle in
Prague for a drive he met a
baron famous in all the land {1575.}.
The baron was John von
Zerotin, the richest member of the
Brethren's Church. He had come to Prague on very
important
business. His home lay at Namiest, in
Moravia. He lived in
a
stately castle, built on
two huge crags, and surrounded by the
houses of his retainers and
domestics. His estate was
twenty-five
miles square. He had a lovely park of beeches, pines
and old oaks.
He held his court in kingly
style. He had gentlemen of the
chamber
of noble birth. He had pages and secretaries, equerries
and masters
of the chase. He had valets, lackeys, grooms,
stable-boys,
huntsmen, barbers,
watchmen, cooks, tailors, shoemakers, and
saddlers. He had sat at the feet of Blahoslaw, the
learned Church
historian: he kept a Court
Chaplain, who was, of course, a pastor of
the Brethren's Church; and
now he had come to talk things over with
the head of the Holy Roman
Empire.
The Emperor offered the
Baron a seat in his carriage. The
Brother
and the Emperor drove on
side by side.
"I hear," said the Emperor,
"that the Picards are giving up their
religion and going over to
the Utraquists."
The Baron was
astounded. He had never, he said,
heard the slightest
whisper that the Brethren
intended to abandon their own Confessions.
"I have heard it," said the
Emperor, "as positive fact from Baron
Hassenstein
himself."
"It is not true," replied
Zerotin.
"What, then," said the
Emperor, "do the Utraquists mean when they
say that they are the true
Hussites, and wish me to protect them in
their
religion?"
"Your gracious Majesty,"
replied Zerotin, "the Brethren, called
Picards, are the true
Hussites: they have kept their faith
unsullied, as you may see
yourself from the Confession they
presented to
you."44
The Emperor looked
puzzled. He was waxing old and
feeble, and his
memory was
failing.
"What!" he said, "have the
Picards got a Confession?"
He was soon to hear the
real truth of the matter. For some
months
there had sat in Prague a
committee of learned divines, who had met
for the purpose of drawing
up a National Protestant Bohemian
Confession. The dream of Augusta seemed to be coming
true. The
Brethren took their part in
the proceedings. "We are striving," said
Slawata, one of their
deputies, "for peace, love and unity.
We have
no desire to be censors of
dogmas. We leave such matters
to
theological experts." The Confession45 was prepared, read out
at
the Diet, and presented to
the Emperor. It was a compromise
between
the teaching of Luther and
the teaching of the Brethren. In
its
doctrine of justification
by faith it followed the teaching of
Luther: in its doctrine of
the Lord's Supper it inclined to the
broader evangelical view of
the Brethren. The Emperor attended
the
Diet in person, and made a
notable speech.
"I promise," he said, "on
my honour as an Emperor, that I will never
oppress or hinder you in
the exercise of your religion; and I pledge
my word in my own name and
also in the name of my successors."
Let us try to grasp the
meaning of this performance. As the
Edict
of St. James was still in
force, the Brethren, in the eyes of the
law, were still heretics
and rebels; they had no legal standing in
the country; and at any
moment the King in his fury might order them
to quit the land once
more. But the truth is that the
King of
Bohemia was now a mere
figurehead. The real power lay in
the hands
of the barons. The barons were Protestant almost to a
man.
As the Emperor lay dying a
few months later in the castle of
Regensburg, he was heard to
murmur the words, "The happy time is
come." For the Brethren the happy time had come
indeed. They
knew
that the so-called
Utraquist Church was Utraquist only in name; they
knew that the Bible was
read in every village; they knew that
Lutheran doctrines were
preached in hundreds of Utraquist Churches;
they knew that in their own
country they had now more friends than
foes; and thus, free from
the terrors of the law they trod the
primrose path of peace and
power. We have come to the golden
age of
the Brethren's
Church.
It was the age of material
prosperity. As the sun of freedom
shone
upon their way, the
Brethren drifted further still from the old
Puritan ascetic ideas of
Peter and Gregory the Patriarch.
They had
now all classes in their
ranks. They had seventeen rich
and
powerful barons, of the
stamp of John Zerotin; they had over a
hundred and forty knights;
they had capitalists, flourishing
tradesmen, mayors, and even
generals in the Army, and the Lord High
Chamberlain now complained
that two-thirds of the people in Bohemia
were Brethren.46 Nor was this all. For many years the Brethren
had
been renowned as the most
industrious and prosperous people in the
country; and were specially
famous for their manufacture of knives.
They were noted for their
integrity of character, and were able to
obtain good situations as
managers of estates, houses, wine cellars
and mills; and in many of
the large settlements, such as Jungbunzlau
and Leitomischl, they
conducted flourishing business concerns for
the benefit of the Church
at large. They made their
settlements the
most prosperous places in
the country; they built hospitals; they
had a fund for the poor
called the Korbona; and on many estates they
made themselves so useful
that the barons, in their gratitude, set
them free from the usual
tolls and taxes. To the Brethren
business
was now a sacred duty. They had seen the evils of poverty, and
they
did their best to end
them. They made no hard and fast
distinction
between secular and sacred;
and the cooks and housemaids in the
Brethren's Houses were
appointed by the Church, and called from one
sphere of service to
another, just as much as the presbyters and
deacons. The clergy, though still doing manual
labour, were now
rather better off: the
gardens and fields attached to the manses
helped to swell their
income; and, therefore, we are not surprised
to hear that some of them
were married.
Again, the Brethren were
champions of education. They had
seen the
evil of their ways. As the exiles banished by Ferdinand I.
came
into contact with Lutherans
in Prussia they heard, rather to their
disgust, that they were
commonly regarded by the German Protestants
as a narrow-minded and
benighted set of men; and, therefore, at the
special invitation of the
Lutheran Bishop Speratus, they began the
practice of sending some of
their students to foreign universities.
It is pathetic to read how
the first two students were sent
{1549.}. "We granted them,"
says the record, "their means of
support. We gave them £7 10s. a-piece, and sent
them off to Basle."
We are not informed how
long the money was to last. For
some years
the new policy was fiercely
opposed; and the leader of the
opposition was John
Augusta. He regarded this new
policy with
horror, condemned it as a
falling away from the old simplicity and
piety, and predicted that
it would bring about the ruin of the
Brethren's Church. At the head of the progressive party was
John
Blahoslaw, the
historian. He had been to
Wittenberg and Basle
himself; he was a master of
Greek and Latin; and now he wrote a
brilliant philippic,
pouring scorn on the fears of the conservative
party. "For my part," he
said, "I have no fear that learned and
pious men will ever ruin
the Church. I am far more afraid of
the
action of those high-minded
and stupid schemers, who think more
highly of themselves than
they ought to think." It is clear
to whom
these stinging words
refer. They are a plain hit at
Augusta. "It is
absurd," he continued, "to
be afraid of learning and culture.
As
long as our leaders are
guided by the Spirit of Christ, all will be
well; but when craft and
cunning, and worldly prudence creep in,
then woe to the Brethren's
Church! Let us rather be careful
whom we
admit to the ministry, and
then the Lord will preserve us from
destruction." As we read these biting words, we can
understand how
it came to pass that
Augusta, during his last few years, was held in
such little honour. The old man was behind the times. The
progressive party
triumphed. Before long there were
forty students
at foreign
Universities. The whole attitude of
the Brethren
changed. As the Humanist movement spread in
Bohemia, the Brethren
began to take an interest
in popular education; and now, aided by
friendly nobles, they
opened a number of free elementary schools.
At Eibenschütz, in Moravia,
they had a school for the sons of the
nobility, with Esrom
Rüdinger as headmaster; both Hebrew and Greek
were taught; and the school
became so famous that many of the pupils
came from Germany. At Holleschau, Leitomischl,
Landskron,
Gross-Bitesch, Austerlitz,
Fulneck, Meseretoch, Chropin, Leipnik,
Kaunic, Trebitzch, Paskau,
Ungarisch-Brod, Jungbunzlau, and Prerau,
they had free schools
supported by Protestant nobles and manned with
Brethren's teachers. As there is no direct evidence to
the
contrary, we may take it
for granted that in these schools the
syllabus was much the same
as in the other schools of the country.
In most the Latin language
was taught, and in some dialectics,
rhetoric, physics,
astronomy and geometry. The
education was
largely practical. At most of the Bohemian schools in those
days
the children were taught,
by means of conversation books, how to
look after a horse, how to
reckon with a landlord, how to buy cloth,
how to sell a garment, how
to write a letter, how to make terms with
a pedlar, how, in a word,
to get on in the world. But the
Brethren
laid the chief stress on
religion. Instead of separating
the
secular and the sacred,
they combined the two in a wonderful way,
and taught both at the same
time. For this purpose, they
published,
in the first place, a
school edition of their Catechism in three
languages, Bohemian,
German, and Latin; and thus the Catechism
became the scholar's chief
means of instruction. He learned to
read
from his Catechism; he
learned Latin from his Catechism; he learned
German from his Catechism;
and thus, while mastering foreign
tongues, he was being
grounded at the same time in the articles of
the Christian faith. He lived, in a word, from morning to
night in
a Christian
atmosphere. For the same purpose a
Brother named
Matthias Martinus prepared
a book containing extracts from the
Gospels and Epistles. It was printed in six parallel
columns. In
the first were grammatical
notes; in the second the text in Greek;
in the third a translation
in Bohemian; in the fourth in German; in
the fifth in Latin; and in
the sixth a brief exposition.
Second, the Brethren used
another text-book called the "Book of
Morals." It was based, apparently, on Erasmus's
"Civilitas Morum."
It was a simple, practical
guide to daily conduct. It was
written
in rhyme, and the children
learned it by heart. It was divided
into
three parts. In the first, the child was taught how
to behave from
morning to night; in the
second, how to treat his elders and
masters; in the third, how
to be polite at table.
Third, the Brethren, in all
their schools, made regular use of
hymn-books; and the scholar
learnt to sing by singing hymns.
Sometimes the hymns were in
a separate volume; sometimes a
selection was bound up with
the Catechism. But in either case
the
grand result was the
same. As we follow the later
fortunes of the
Brethren we shall find
ourselves face to face with a difficult
problem. How was it, we ask, that in later years,
when their little
Church was crushed to
powder, these Brethren held the faith for a
hundred years? How was it that the "Hidden Seed" had
such vitality?
How was it that, though
forbidden by law, they held the fort till
the times of revival
came? For answer we turn to their
Catechism.
They had learned it first
in their own homes; they had learned it
later at school; they had
made it the very marrow of their life;
they taught it in turn to
their children; and thus in the darkest
hours of trial they handed
on the torch of faith from one generation
to
another.
We come now to another
secret of their strength. Of all
the
Protestants in Europe the
Bohemian Brethren were the first to
publish a Hymn-book; and by
this time they had published ten
editions. The first three were in Bohemian, and
were edited by Luke
of Prague, 1501, 1505,
1519; the fourth in German, edited by Michael
Weiss, 1531; the fifth in
Bohemian, edited by John Horn, 1541; the
sixth in German, edited by
John Horn, 1544; the seventh in Polish,
edited by George Israel,
1554; the eighth in Bohemian, edited by
John Blahoslaw, 1561; the
ninth in German, 1566; the tenth in
Polish, 1569. As they wished here to appeal to all
classes, they
published hymns both
ancient and modern, and tunes both grave and
gay. Among the hymn-writers were John Hus,
Rockycana, Luke of
Prague, Augusta, and Martin
Luther; and among the tunes were
Gregorian Chants and
popular rondels of the day. The
hymns and
tunes were published in one
volume. The chief purpose of the
hymns
was clear religious
instruction. The Brethren had
nothing to
conceal. They had no mysterious secret doctrines;
and no mysterious
secret practices. They published their hymn-books, not
for
themselves only, but for
all the people in the country, and for
Evangelical Christians in
other lands. "It has been our chief aim,"
they said, "to let everyone
fully and clearly understand what our
views are with regard to
the articles of the Christian faith."
And
here the hymns were
powerful preachers of the faith.
They spread
the Brethren's creed in all
directions. They were clear,
orderly,
systematic, and Scriptural;
and thus they were sung in the family
circle, by bands of young
men in the Brethren's Houses, by shepherds
watching their flocks by
night, by sturdy peasants as they trudged
to market. And then, on Sunday, in an age when
congregational
singing was as yet but
little known, the Brethren made the rafters
ring with the sound of
united praise. "Your churches," wrote the
learned Esrom Rüdinger,
"surpass all others in singing. For
where
else are songs of praise,
of thanksgiving, of prayer and instruction
so often heard? Where is there better singing? The newest edition
of the Bohemian Hymn-book,
with its seven hundred and forty-three
hymns, is an evidence of
the multitude of your songs. Three
hundred
and forty-six have been
translated into German. In your
churches
the people can all sing and
take part in the worship of God."
But of all the services
rendered by the Brethren to the cause of the
evangelical faith in
Bohemia the noblest and the most enduring was
their translation of the
Bible into the Bohemian tongue. In
the
archives of the Brethren's
Church at Herrnhut are now to be seen six
musty volumes known as the
Kralitz Bible (1579-93). The idea
was
broached by Blahoslaw, the
Church historian. The expense was
born
by Baron John von
Zerotin. The actual printing was
executed at
Zerotin's Castle at
Kralitz. The translation was based,
not on the
Vulgate, but on the
original Hebrew and Greek. The work
of
translating the Old
Testament was entrusted to six Hebrew scholars,
Aeneas, Cepollo, Streic,
Ephraim, Jessen, and Capito. The
New
Testament was translated by
Blahoslaw himself (1565). The work
was
of national interest. For the first time the Bohemian
people
possessed the Bible in a
translation from the original tongue, with
the chapters subdivided
into verses, and the Apocrypha separated
from the Canonical
Books. The work appeared at first
in cumbersome
form. It was issued in six bulky volumes, with
only eight or nine
verses to a page, and a
running commentary in the margin.
The paper
was strong, the binding
dark brown, the page quarto, the type Latin,
the style chaste and
idiomatic, and the commentary fairly rich in
broad practical
theology. But all this was no use
to the poor.
For
the benefit, therefore, of
the common people the Brethren published
a small thin paper edition
in a plain calf binding. It
contained an
index of quotations from
the Old Testament in the New, an index of
proper names with their
meanings, a lectionary for the Christian
Year, references in the
margin, and a vignette including the famous
Brethren's episcopal seal,
"The Lamb and the Flag." The size of the
page was only five inches
by seven and a half; the number of pages
was eleven hundred and
sixty; the paper was so remarkably thin that
the book was only an inch
and a quarter thick;47 and thus it was
suited in every way to hold
the same place in the affections of the
people that the Geneva
Bible held in England in the days of our
Puritan fathers. The Kralitz Bible was a
masterpiece. It helped
to
fix and purify the
language, and thus completed what Stitny and Hus
had begun. It became the model of a chaste and
simple style; and
its beauty of language was
praised by the Jesuits. It is a
relic
that can never be
forgotten, a treasure that can never lose its
value. It is issued now, word for word, by the
British and Foreign
Bible Society; it is read
by the people in their own homes, and is
used in the Protestant
Churches of the country; and thus, as the
Catholic, Gindely, says, it
will probably endure as long as the
Bohemian tongue is
spoken.
But even this was not the
end of the Brethren's labours. We
come to
the most amazing fact in
their history. On the one hand they
were
the greatest literary force
in the country;48 on the other they took
the smallest part in her
theological controversies. For
example,
take the case of John
Blahoslaw. He was one of the most
brilliant
scholars of his day. He was master of a beautiful literary
style.
He was a member of the
Brethren's Inner Council. He wrote
a
"History of the
Brethren." He translated the New
Testament into
Bohemian. He prepared a standard Bohemian
Grammar. He wrote also
a
treatise on Music, and
other works too many to mention here.
And
yet, learned Bishop though
he was, he wrote only one theological
treatise, "Election through
Grace," and even here he handled his
subject from a practical
rather than a theological point of view.
Again, take the case of
Jacob Bilek, Augusta's companion in prison.
If ever a man had just
cause to hate the Church of Rome it was
surely this humble friend
of the great Augusta; and yet he wrote a
full account of their
dreary years in prison without saying one
bitter word against his
persecutors and tormentors.49 From
this
point of view his book is
delightful. It is full of piety, of
trust
in God, of vivid dramatic
description; it has not a bitter word from
cover to cover; and thus it
is a beautiful and precious example of
the broad and charitable
spirit of the Brethren.
Again, it is surely
instructive to note what subject most attracted
the Brethren's
attention. For religious debate
they cared but
little; for history they
had a consuming passion; and now their
leading scholars produced
the greatest historical works in the
language. Brother Jaffet wrote a work on the
Brethren's Episcopal
Orders, entitled, "The
Sword of Goliath." Wenzel Brezan
wrote a
history of the "House of
Rosenberg," containing much interesting
information about Bohemian
social life. Baron Charles von
Zerotin
wrote several volumes of
memoirs. The whole interest of
the
Brethren now was broad and
national in character. The more
learned
they grew the less part
they took in theological disputes.
They
regarded such disputes as
waste of time; they had no pet doctrines
to defend; they were now in
line with the other Protestants of the
country; and they held that
the soul was greater than the mind and
good conduct best of
all. No longer did they issue
"Confessions of
Faith" of their own; no
longer did they lay much stress on their
points of difference with
Luther. We come here to a point of
great
importance. It has been asserted by some historians
that the
Brethren never taught the
doctrine of Justification by Faith.
For
answer we turn to their
later Catechism prepared (1554) by Jirek
Gyrck.
"In what way," ran one
question, "can a sinful man obtain
salvation?"
"By the pure Grace of God
alone, through Faith in Jesus Christ our
Lord who of God is made
unto us wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification and
redemption."
What sort of picture does
all this bring before us? It is
the
picture of a body of men
who had made remarkable progress.
No
longer did they despise
education; they fostered it more than any
men in the country. No longer did they speak with contempt
of
marriage; they spoke of it
as a symbol of holier things. It
was
time, thought some, for
these broad-minded men to have their due
reward. It was time to amend the insulting law,
and tear the musty
Edict of St. James to
tatters.
CHAPTER
XIII.
THE LETTER OF MAJESTY,
1603-1609.
Of all the members of the
Brethren's Church, the most powerful and
the most discontented was
Baron Wenzel von Budowa. He was
now
fifty-six years of
age. He had travelled in Germany,
Denmark,
Holland, England, France
and Italy. He had studied at
several
famous universities. He had made the acquaintance of many
learned
men. He had entered the Imperial service, and
served as ambassador
at Constantinople. He had mastered Turkish and Arabic, had
studied
the Mohammedan religion,
had published the Alcoran in Bohemian, and
had written a treatise
denouncing the creed and practice of Islam as
Satanic in origin and
character. He belonged to the
Emperor's Privy
Council, and also to the
Imperial Court of Appeal. He took
part in
theological controversies,
and preached sermons to his tenants.
He
was the bosom friend of
Baron Charles von Zerotin, the leading
Brother of Moravia. He corresponded, from time to time, with
the
struggling Protestants in
Hungary, and had now become the recognised
leader, not only of the
Brethren, but of all evangelicals in
Bohemia.
He had one great purpose to
attain. As the Brethren had
rendered
such signal service to the
moral welfare of the land, it seemed to
him absurd and unfair that
they should still be under the ban of the
law and still be denounced
in Catholic pulpits as children of the
devil. He resolved to remedy the evil. The Emperor, Rudolph
II.,
paved the way. He was just the man that Budowa
required. He
was
weak in body and in
mind. He had ruined his health,
said popular
scandal, by indulging in
dissolute pleasures. His face
was
shrivelled, his hair
bleached, his back bent, his step tottering.
He was too much interested
in astrology, gems, pictures, horses,
antique relics and similar
curiosities to take much interest in
government; he suffered
from religious mania, and was constantly
afraid of being murdered;
and his daily hope and prayer was that he
might be spared all
needless trouble in this vexatious world and
have absolutely nothing to
do. And now he committed an act
of
astounding folly. He first revived the Edict of St. James,
ordered
the nobles throughout the
land to turn out all Protestant pastors
{1602-3.}, and sent a body
of armed men to close the Brethren's
Houses at Jungbunzlau; and
then, having disgusted two-thirds of his
loyal subjects, he summoned
a Diet, and asked for money for a
crusade against the
Turks. But this was more than
Wenzel could
endure. He attended the Diet, and made a
brilliant speech. He
had
nothing, he said, to say
against the Emperor. He would not
blame
him for reviving the musty
Edict. For that he blamed some
secret
disturbers of the
peace. If the Emperor needed money
and men, the
loyal knights and nobles of
Bohemia would support him. But
that
support would be given on
certain conditions. If the Emperor
wished
his subjects to be loyal,
he must first obey the law of the land
himself. "We stand," he
said, "one and all by the Confession of
1575, and we do not know a
single person who is prepared to submit
to the Consistory at
Prague." He finished, wept,
prepared a
petition, and sent it in to
the poor invisible Rudolph. And
Rudolph
replied as Emperors
sometimes do. He replied by closing
the Diet.
Again, however, six years
later, Budowa returned to the attack
{1609.}. He was acting, not merely on behalf of
the Brethren, but
on behalf of all
Protestants in the country. And
this fact is the
key to the situation. As we follow the dramatic story to its
sad
and tragic close, we must
remember that from this time onward the
Brethren, for all intents
and purposes, had almost abandoned their
position as a separate
Church, and had cast in their lot, for good
or evil, with the other
Protestants in Bohemia. They were
striving
now for the recognition,
not of their own Confession of Faith, but
of the general Bohemian
Protestant Confession presented to the
Emperor, Maximilian
II. And thus Budowa became a
national hero.
He
called a meeting of
Lutherans and Brethren in the historic "Green
Saloon," prepared a
resolution demanding that the Protestant
Confession be inscribed in
the Statute Book, and, followed by a
crowd of nobles and
knights, was admitted to the sacred presence of
the
Emperor.
Again the Diet was
summoned. The hall was crammed, and
knights and
nobles jostled each other
in the corridors and in the square outside
{Jan. 28th, 1609.}. For some weeks the Emperor, secluded in
his
cabinet, held to his point
like a hero. The debate was
conducted in
somewhat marvellous
fashion. There, in the Green
Saloon, sat the
Protestants, preparing
proposals and petitions. There, in
the
Archbishop's palace, sat
the Catholics, rather few in number, and
wondering what to do. And there, in his chamber, sat the
grizzly,
rickety, imperial Lion,
consulting with his councillors, Martinic
and Slawata, and dictating
his replies. And then, when the
king had
his answer ready, the Diet
met in the Council Chamber to hear it
read aloud. His first reply was now as sharp as
ever. He
declared
that the faith of the
Church of Rome was the only lawful faith in
Bohemia. "And as for these
Brethren," he said, "whose teaching has
been so often forbidden by
royal decrees and decisions of the Diet,
I order them, like my
predecessors, to fall in with the Utraquists
or Catholics, and declare
that their meetings shall not be permitted
on any pretence
whatever."
In vain the Protestants, by
way of reply, drew up a monster
petition, and set forth
their grievances in detail. They
suffered,
they said, not from actual
persecution, but from nasty insults and
petty annoyances. They were still described in Catholic
pulpits as
heretics and children of
the devil. They were still
forbidden to
honour the memory of Hus.
They were still forbidden to print books
without the consent of the
Archbishop. But the King snapped
them
short. He told the estates to end their babble,
and again closed
the Diet {March
31st.}.
The blood of Budowa was
up. The debate, thought he, was
fast
becoming a farce. The King was fooling his subjects. The King must
be taught a lesson. As the Diet broke up, he stood at the
door, and
shouted out in ringing
tones: "Let all who love the King and the
land, let all who care for
unity and love, let all who remember the
zeal of our fathers, meet
here at six to-morrow morn."
He spent the night with
some trusty allies, prepared another
declaration, met his
friends in the morning, and informed the King,
in language clear, that the
Protestants had now determined to win
their rights by force. And Budowa was soon true to his
word. He
sent envoys asking for help
to the King's brother Matthias, to the
Elector of Saxony, to the
Duke of Brunswick, and to other Protestant
leaders. He called a meeting of nobles and
knights in the courtyard
of the castle, and there,
with heads bared and right hands upraised,
they swore to be true to
each other and to win their liberty at any
price, even at the price of
blood. He arranged for an
independent
meeting in the town hall of
the New Town. The King forbade the
meeting. What better place, replied Budowa, would
His Majesty like
to suggest? As he led his men across the long Prague
bridge, he was
followed by thousands of
supporters. He arrived in due time
at the
square in front of the
hall. The Royal Captain appeared
and ordered
him off. The crowd jeered and whistled the
Captain away.
And yet Budowa was no
vulgar rebel. He insisted that
every session
in the hall should be begun
and ended with prayer. He informed
the
King, again and again, that
all he wished was liberty of worship for
Protestants. He did his best to put an end to the
street rows, the
drunken brawls, that now
disgraced the city.
For the third time the King
summoned the Diet {May 25th.}. The
last
round in the terrible
combat now began. He ordered the
estates to
appear in civilian's
dress. They arrived armed to the
teeth. He
ordered them to open the
proceedings by attending Mass in the
Cathedral. The Catholics alone obeyed; the
Protestants held a
service of their own; and
yet, despite these danger signals, the
King was as stubborn as
ever, and again he sent a message to say
that he held to his first
decision. The Diet was
thunderstruck,
furious,
desperate.
"We have had enough of
useless talk," said Count Matthias Thurn; "it
is time to take to
arms." The long fight was drawing
to a finish.
As the King refused to
listen to reason, the members of the Diet,
one and all, Protestants
and Catholics alike, prepared an ultimatum
demanding that all
evangelical nobles, knights, citizens and
peasants should have full
and perfect liberty to worship God in
their own way, and to build
schools and churches on all Royal
estates; and, in order that
the King might realise the facts of the
case, Budowa formed a Board
of thirty directors, of whom fourteen
were Brethren, raised an
army in Prague, and sent the nobles flying
through the land to levy
money and troops. The country, in
fact,
was now in open
revolt. And thus, at length
compelled by brute
force, the poor old King
gave way, and made his name famous in
history by signing the
Letter of Majesty and granting full religious
liberty to all adherents of
the Bohemian National Protestant
Confession. All adherents of the Confession could
worship as they
pleased, and all classes,
except the peasantry, could build schools
and churches on Royal
estates {July 9th.}. "No decree of any kind,"
ran one sweeping clause,
"shall be issued either by us or by our
heirs and succeeding kings
against the above established religious
peace."
The delight in Prague was
boundless. The Letter of Majesty
was
carried through the streets
in grand triumphal procession.
The
walls were adorned with
flaming posters. The bells of the
churches
were rung. The people met in the Church of the Holy
Cross, and
there sang jubilant psalms
of thanksgiving and praise. The
King's
couriers posted through the
land to tell the gladsome news; the
letter was hailed as the
heavenly herald of peace and goodwill to
men; and Budowa was adored
as a national hero, and the redresser of
his people's
wrongs.
But the work of the Diet
was not yet complete. As the
Brethren, led
by the brave Budowa, had
borne the brunt of the battle, we naturally
expect to find that now the
victory was won, they would have the
lion's share of the
spoils. But they really occupied a
rather
modest position. The next duty of the Diet was to make
quite sure
that the Letter of Majesty
would not be broken. For this
purpose
they elected a Board of
Twenty-four Defenders, and of these
Defenders only eight were
Brethren. Again, the Brethren had
now to
submit to the rule of a New
National Protestant Consistory. Of
that
Consistory the
Administrator was a Utraquist Priest; the next in
rank was a Brethren's
Bishop; the total number of members was
twelve; and of these twelve
only three were Brethren. If
the
Brethren, therefore, were
fairly represented, they must have
constituted at this time
about one-quarter or one-third of the
Protestants in
Bohemia.50 They were now a part, in
the eyes of the
law, of the National
Protestant Church. They were known
as
Utraquist Christians. They accepted the National Confession
as
their own standard of
faith, and though they could still ordain
their own priests, their
candidates for the priesthood had first to
be examined by the national
Administrator.
And, further, the Brethren
had now weakened their union with the
Moravian and Polish
branches. No longer did the three
parts of the
Church stand upon the same
footing. In Poland the Brethren
were
still the leading body; in
Moravia they were still independent; in
Bohemia alone they bowed to
the rule of others. And yet, in
some
important respects, they
were still as independent as ever.
They
could still hold their own
Synods and practise their own ceremonies;
they still retained their
own Confession of faith; they could still
conduct their own schools
and teach their Catechism; and they could
still, above all, enforce
as of old their system of moral
discipline. And this they guarded as the apple of
their eye.
As soon as the above
arrangements were complete they addressed
themselves to the important
task of defining their own position.
And for this purpose they
met at a General Synod at Zerawic, and
prepared a comprehensive
descriptive work, entitled "Ratio
Disciplinæ"--i.e., Account
of Discipline.51 It was a
thorough,
exhaustive, orderly code of
rules and regulations. It was meant
as
a guide and a
manifesto. It proved to be an
epitaph. In the
second
place, the Brethren now
issued (1615) a new edition of their
Catechism, with the
questions and answers in four parallel
columns--Greek, Bohemian,
German and Latin;52 and thus, once more,
they shewed their desire to
play their part in national education.
Thus, at last, had the
Brethren gained their freedom. They
had
crossed the Red Sea, had
traversed the wilderness, had smitten the
Midianites hip and thigh,
and could now settle down in the land of
freedom flowing with milk
and honey.
CHAPTER
XIV.
THE DOWNFALL,
1616-1621.
The dream of bliss became a
nightmare. As the tide of
Protestantism
ebbed and flowed in various
parts of the Holy Roman Empire, so the
fortunes of the Brethren
ebbed and flowed in the old home of their
fathers. We have seen how the Brethren rose to
prosperity and
power. We have now to see what brought about
their ruin. It
was
nothing in the moral
character of the Brethren themselves.
It was
purely and simply their
geographical position. If Bohemia
had only
been an island, as
Shakespeare seems to have thought it was, it is
more than likely that the
Church of the Brethren would have
flourished there down to
the present day. But Bohemia lay in
the
very heart of European
politics; the King was always a member of the
House of Austria; the House
of Austria was the champion of the
Catholic faith, and the
Brethren now were crushed to powder in the
midst of that mighty
European conflict known as the Thirty Years'
War. We note briefly the
main stages of the process.
The first cause was the
rising power of the Jesuits. For
the last
fifty years these zealous
men had been quietly extending their
influence in the
country. They had built a
magnificent college in
Prague. They had established a number of schools
for the common
people. They had obtained positions as tutors in
noble families.
They went about from
village to village, preaching, sometimes in
the village churches and
sometimes in the open air; and one of their
number, Wenzel Sturm, had
written an exhaustive treatise denouncing
the doctrines of the
Brethren. But now these Jesuits
used more
violent measures. They attacked the Brethren in hot,
abusive
language. They declared that the wives of
Protestant ministers were
whores. They denounced their children as
bastards. They
declared
that it was better to have
the devil in the house than a Protestant
woman. And the more they preached, and the more
they wrote, the
keener the party feeling in
Bohemia grew.
The next cause was the
Letter of Majesty itself. As soon
as that
Letter was closely
examined, a flaw was found in the crystal.
We
come to what has been
called the "Church Building Difficulty."
It
was clearly provided in one
clause of the Letter of Majesty that the
Protestants should have
perfect liberty to build churches on all
Royal estates. But now arose the difficult question,
what were
Royal estates? What about Roman Catholic Church
estates? What
about estates held by
Catholic officials as tenants of the King?
Were these Royal estates or
were they not? There were two
opinions
on the subject. According to the Protestants they were;
according
to the Jesuits they were
not; and now the Jesuits used this argument
to influence the action of
Matthias, the next King of Bohemia.
The
dispute soon came to
blows. At Klostergrab the land
belonged to the
Catholic Archbishop of
Prague; at Brunau it belonged to the Abbot of
Brunau; and yet, on each of
these estates, the Protestants had
churches. They believed, of course, that they were
in the right.
They regarded those estates
as Royal estates. They had no
desire
to break the law of the
land. But now the Catholics began
to force
the pace. At Brunau the Abbot interfered and
turned the Protestants
out of the church. At Klostergrab the church was pulled
down, and
the wood of which it was
built was used as firewood; and in each
case the new King,
Matthias, took the Catholic side.
The truth is,
Matthias openly broke the
Letter. He broke it on unquestioned
Royal
estates. He expelled Protestant ministers from
their pulpits, and
put Catholics in their
place. His officers burst into
Protestant
churches and interrupted
the services; and, in open defiance of the
law of the land, the
priests drove Protestants with dogs and
scourges to the Mass, and
thrust the wafer down their mouths.
What
right, said the
Protestants, had the Catholics to do these things?
The Jesuits had an amazing
answer ready. For two reasons,
they
held, the Letter of Majesty
was invalid. It was invalid because
it
had been obtained by force,
and invalid because it had not been
sanctioned by the Pope.
What peace could there be with these
conflicting views? It is clear that a storm was
brewing.
The third cause was the
famous dispute about the Kingship.
As
Matthias was growing old
and feeble, it was time to choose his
successor; and Matthias,
therefore, summoned a Diet, and informed
the Estates, to their great
surprise, that all they had to do now
was to accept as King his
adopted son, Ferdinand Archduke of Styria.
At first the Diet was
thunderstruck. They had met to
choose their
own King. They intended to
choose a Protestant, and now they were
commanded to choose this
Ferdinand, the most zealous Catholic in
Europe. And yet, for some mysterious reason, the
Diet actually
yielded. They surrendered their elective rights;
they accepted
Ferdinand as King, and
thus, at the most critical and dangerous
point in the whole history
of the country, they allowed a Catholic
devotee to become the ruler
of a Protestant people. For that
fatal
mistake they had soon to
pay in full. Some say they were
frightened
by threats; some say that
the Diet was summoned in a hurry, and that
only a few attended. The truth is, they were completely
outwitted.
At this point the
Protestant nobles of Bohemia showed that fatal
lack of prompt and united
action which was soon to fill the whole
land with all the horrors
of war. In vain Budowa raised a
vehement
protest. He found but few to support him. If the Protestants
desired peace and good
order in Bohemia, they ought to have insisted
upon their rights and
elected a Protestant King; and now, in
Ferdinand, they had
accepted a man who was pledged to fight for the
Church of Rome with every
breath of his body. He was a man
of
fervent piety. He was a pupil of the Jesuits. He regarded
himself
as the divinely appointed
champion of the Catholic faith. He
had
already stamped out the
Protestants in Styria. He had a
strong will
and a clear conception of
what he regarded as his duty. He
would
rather, he declared, beg
his bread from door to door, with his
family clinging
affectionately around him, than allow a single
Protestant in his
dominions. "I would rather," he said, "rule over a
wilderness than over
heretics." But what about his oath
to observe
the Letter of Majesty? Should he take the oath or not? If he took
it he would be untrue to
his conscience; if he refused he could
never be crowned King of
Bohemia. He consulted his friends
the
Jesuits. They soon eased his conscience. It was wicked, they
said,
of Rudolph II. to sign such
a monstrous document; but it was not
wicked for the new King to
take the oath to keep it.
And,
therefore, Ferdinand took
the oath, and was crowned King of Bohemia.
"We shall now see," said a
lady at the ceremony, "whether the
Protestants are to rule the
Catholics or the Catholics the
Protestants."
She was right. Forthwith the Protestants realised their
blunder,
and made desperate efforts
to recover the ground they had lost.
Now
was the time for the
Twenty-four Defenders to arise and do their
duty; now was the time, now
or never, to make the Letter no longer a
grinning mockery. They began by acting strictly according
to law.
They had been empowered to
summon representatives of the Protestant
Estates. They summoned their assembly, prepared a
petition, and
sent it off to
Matthias. He replied that their
assembly was
illegal. He refused to remedy their
grievances. The Defenders
were
goaded to fury. At their head was a violent man, Henry
Thurn. He
resolved on open
rebellion. He would have the new
King Ferdinand
dethroned and have his two
councillors, Martinic and Slawata, put to
death. It was the 23rd of May, 1618. At an early hour on
that
fatal day, the Protestant
Convention met in the Hradschin, and then,
a little later, the fiery
Thurn sallied out with a body of armed
supporters, arrived at the
Royal Castle, and forced his way into the
Regent's Chamber, where the
King's Councillors were assembled.
There, in a corner, by the
stove sat Martinic and Slawata.
There,
in that Regent's Chamber,
began the cause of all the woe that
followed. There was struck the first blow of the
Thirty Years' War.
As Thurn and his henchmen
stood in the presence of the two men, who,
in their opinion, had done
the most to poison the mind of Matthias,
they felt that the decisive
moment had come. The interview
was
stormy. Voices rang in wild confusion. The Protestant
spokesman
was Paul von Rican. He accused Martinic and Slawata of two
great
crimes. They had openly broken the Letter of
Majesty, and had
dictated King Matthias's
last reply. He appealed to his
supporters
crowded into the corridor
outside.
"Aye, aye," shouted the
crowd.
"Into the Black Tower with
them," said some.
"Nay, nay," said Rupow, a
member of the Brethren's Church, "out of
the window with them, in
the good old Bohemian fashion."
At this signal, agreed upon
before, Martinic was dragged to the
window. He begged for a father
confessor.
"Commend thy soul to God,"
said someone. "Are we to allow any Jesuit
scoundrels
here?"
"Jesus! Mary!" he
screamed.
He was flung headlong from
the window. He clutched at
the
window-sill. A blow came down on his hands. He had to leave
go,
and down he fell, seventy
feet, into the moat below.
"Let us see," said someone,
"whether his Mary will help him."
He fell on a heap of soft
rubbish. He scrambled away with
only a
wound in the
head.
"By God," said one of the
speakers, "his Mary has helped him."
At this point the
conspirators appear to have lost their heads. As
Martinic had not been
killed by his fall, it was absurd to treat
Slawata in the same way;
and yet they now flung him out of the
window, and his secretary
Fabricius after him. Not one of the
three
was killed, not one was
even maimed for life, and through the
country the rumour spread
that all three had been delivered by the
Virgin
Mary.
>From that moment war
was inevitable. As the details of
the struggle
do not concern us, it will
be enough to state here that the
Defenders now, in slipshod
fashion, began to take a variety of
measures to maintain the
Protestant cause. They formed a
national
Board of Thirty
Directors. They assessed new taxes
to maintain the
war, but never took the
trouble to collect them. They
relied more
on outside help than on
their own united action. They
deposed
Ferdinand II.; they elected
Frederick, Elector Palatine, and
son-in-law of James I. of
England, as King of Bohemia; and they
ordered the Jesuits out of
the kingdom. There was a strange
scene
in Prague when these
Jesuits departed. They formed in
procession in
the streets, and, clad in
black, marched off with bowed heads and
loud wailings; and when
their houses were examined they were found
full of gunpowder and
arms. For the moment the
Protestants of
Prague were wild with
joy. In the great Cathedral they
pulled off
the ornaments and destroyed
costly pictures. What part did
the
Brethren play in these
abominations? We do not know. At this
tragic point in their
fateful story our evidence is so lamentably
scanty that it is
absolutely impossible to say what part they played
in the revolution. But one thing at least we know without a
doubt.
We know that the Catholics
were now united and the Protestants
quarrelling with each
other; we know that Ferdinand was prompt and
vigorous, and the new King
Frederick stupid and slack; and we know,
finally, that the Catholic
army, commanded by the famous general
Tilly, was far superior to
the Protestant army under Christian of
Anhalt. At last the Catholic army appeared
before the walls of
Prague. The battle of the White Hill was fought
(November 8th,
1620). The new King, in the city, was
entertaining some ambassadors
to dinner. The Protestant army was routed, the new
King fled from
the country, and once again
Bohemia lay crushed under the heel of
the
conqueror.
At this time the heel of
the conqueror consisted in a certain Prince
Lichtenstein. He was made regent of Prague, and was
entrusted with
the duty of restoring the
country to order. He set about his
work
in a cool and methodical
manner. He cleared the rabble out
of the
streets. He recalled the Jesuits. He ordered the Brethren out
of
the kingdom. He put a Roman Catholic Priest into
every church in
Prague; and then he made
the strange announcement that all the
rebels, as they were
called, would be freely pardoned, and invited
the leading Protestant
nobles to appear before him at Prague.
They
walked into the trap like
flies into a cobweb. If the nobles
had
only cared to do so, they
might all have escaped after the battle of
the White Hill; for Tilly,
the victorious general, had purposely
given them time to do
so. But for some reason they nearly
all
preferred to stay. And now Lichtenstein had them in his
grasp. He
had forty-seven leaders
arrested in one night. He
imprisoned them
in the castle tower, had
them tried and condemned, obtained the
approval of Ferdinand, and
then, while some were pardoned, informed
the remaining twenty-seven
that they had two days in which to
prepare for death. They were to die on June 21st. Among those
leaders about a dozen were
Brethren. We have arrived at the
last
act of the tragedy. We have seen the grim drama develop, and
when
the curtain falls the stage
will be covered with corpses and blood.
CHAPTER
XV.
THE DAY OF BLOOD AT
PRAGUE.
The City of Prague was
divided into two parts, the Old Town and the
New Town. In the middle of
the Old Town was a large open space,
called the Great
Square. On the west side of the
Great Square stood
the Council House, on the
east the old Thein Church. The
condemned
prisoners, half of whom
were Brethren, were in the Council House: in
front of their window was
the scaffold, draped in black cloth,
twenty feet high, and
twenty-two yards square; from the window they
stepped out on to a
balcony, and from the balcony to the scaffold
ran a short flight of
steps. In that Great Square, and on
that
scaffold, we find the scene
of our story.
When early in the morning
of Monday, June 21st, the assembled
prisoners looked out of the
windows of their rooms to take their
last view of earth, they
saw a splendid, a brilliant, a gorgeous,
but to them a terrible
scene {1621.}. They saw God's sun
just
rising in the east and
reddening the sky and shining in each other's
faces; they saw the dark
black scaffold bathed in light, and the
squares of infantry and
cavalry ranged around it; they saw the
eager, excited throng,
surging and swaying in the Square below and
crowding on the house-tops
to right and left; and they saw on the
further side of the square
the lovely twin towers of the old Thein
Church, where Gregory had
knelt and Rockycana had preached in the
brave days of old. As the church clocks chimed the hour of
five a
gun was fired from the
castle; the prisoners were informed that
their hour had come, and
were ordered to prepare for their doom; and
Lichtenstein and the
magistrates stepped out on to the balcony, an
awning above them to screen
them from the rising sun. The last
act
of the tragedy
opened.
As there was now a long
morning's work to be done, that work was
begun at once; and as the
heads of the martyrs fell off the block in
quick succession the
trumpets brayed and the drums beat an
accompaniment. Grim and ghastly was the scene in that
Great Square
in Prague, on that bright
June morning well nigh three hundred years
ago. There fell the flower of the Bohemian
nobility; and there was
heard the swan song of the
Bohemian Brethren. As the sun
rose
higher in the eastern sky
and shone on the windows of the Council
House, the sun of the
Brethren's pride and power was setting in a
sea of blood; and clear
athwart the lingering light stood out, for
all mankind to see, the
figures of the last defenders of their
freedom and their
faith. Among the number not one had
shown the
white feather in prospect
of death. Not a cheek was blanched,
not a
voice faltered as the dread
hour drew near. One and all they
had
fortified themselves to
look the waiting angel of death in the face.
As they sat in their rooms
the evening before--a sabbath evening it
was--they had all, in one
way or another, drawn nigh to God in
prayer. In one room the prisoners had taken the
Communion together,
in another they joined in
singing psalms and hymns; in another they
had feasted in a last feast
of love. Among these were
various
shades of faith--Lutherans,
Calvinists, Utraquists, Brethren; but
now all differences were
laid aside, for all was nearly over now.
One laid the cloth, and
another the plates; a third brought water
and a fourth said the
simple grace. As the night wore on
they lay
down on tables and benches
to snatch a few hours of that troubled
sleep which gives no
rest. At two they were all broad
awake again,
and again the sound of
psalms and hymns was heard; and as the first
gleams of light appeared
each dressed himself as though for a
wedding, and carefully
turned down the ruffle of his collar so as to
give the executioner no
extra trouble.
Swiftly, in order, and
without much cruelty the gory work was done.
The morning's programme had
all been carefully arranged. At
each
corner of the square was a
squad of soldiers to hold the people in
awe, and to prevent an
attempt at rescue. One man, named
Mydlar,
was the executioner; and,
being a Protestant, he performed his
duties with as much decency
and humanity as possible. He used
four
different swords, and was
paid about £100 for his morning's work.
With his first sword he
beheaded eleven; with his second, five;
with his two last,
eight. The first of these swords is
still to be
seen at Prague, and has the
names of its eleven victims engraven
upon it. Among these names is the name of Wenzel
von Budowa.
In
every instance Mydlar seems
to have done his duty at one blow.
At
his side stood an
assistant, and six masked men in black.
As soon
as Mydlar had severed the
neck, the assistant placed the dead man's
right hand on the block;
the sword fell again; the hand dropped at
the wrist; and the men in
black, as silent as night, gathered up the
bleeding members, wrapped
them in clean black cloth, and swiftly
bore them
away.
The name of Budowa was
second on the list. As many of the
records
of the time were destroyed
by fire, we are not able to tell in full
what part Budowa had played
in the great revolt. He had,
however,
been a leader on the
conquered side. He had fought, as
we know, for
the Letter of Majesty; he
had bearded Rudolph II. in his den; he had
openly opposed the election
of Ferdinand II.; he had welcomed
Frederick, the Protestant
Winter King, at the city gates; and,
therefore, he was justly
regarded by Ferdinand as a champion of the
Protestant national faith
and an enemy of the Catholic Church and
throne. As he was now over seventy years of age
it is hardly likely
that he had fought on the
field of battle. After the battle
of the
White Mountain he had
retired with his family to his country estate.
He had then, strange to
say, been one of those entrapped into
Prague by Lichtenstein, and
had been imprisoned in the White Tower.
There he was tried and
condemned as a rebel, and there, as even
Gindely admits, he bore
himself like a hero to the last. At
first,
along with some other
nobles, he signed a petition to the Elector of
Saxony, imploring him to
intercede with the Emperor on their behalf.
The petition received no
answer. He resigned himself to his
fate.
He was asked why he had
walked into the lion's den. For
some
reason that I fail to
understand Gindely says that what we are told
about the conduct of the
prisoners has only a literary interest.
To
my mind the last words of
Wenzel of Budowa are of the highest
historical importance. They show how the fate of the
Brethren's
Church was involved in the
fate of Bohemia. He had come to
Prague
as a patriot and as a
Brother. He was dying both for his
country
and for his
Church.
"My heart impelled me to
come," he said; "to forsake my country and
its cause would have been
sinning against my conscience. Here
am I,
my God, do unto Thy servant
as seemeth good unto Thee. I would
rather die myself than see
my country die."
As he sat in his room on
the Saturday evening--two days before the
execution--he was visited
by two Capuchin monks. He was
amazed at
their boldness. As they did not understand Bohemian,
the
conversation was conducted
in Latin. They informed him that
their
visit was one of
pity.
"Of pity?" asked the
white-haired old Baron, "How so?"
"We wish to show your
lordship the way to heaven." He
assured them
that he knew the way and
stood on firm ground.
"My Lord only imagines,"
they rejoined, "that he knows the way of
salvation. He is mistaken. Not being a member of the Holy
Church,
he has no share in the
Church's salvation."
But Budowa placed his trust
in Christ alone.
"I have this excellent
promise," he said, "Whosoever believeth in
Him shall not perish but
have everlasting life. Therefore,
until my
last moment, will I abide
by our true Church."
Thus did Budowa declare the
faith of the Brethren. The
Capuchin
monks were horrified. They smote their breasts, declared that
so
hardened a heretic they had
never seen, crossed themselves
repeatedly, and left him
sadly to his fate.
For the last time, on the
Monday morning, he was given another
chance to deny his
faith. Two Jesuits came to see
him.
"We have come to save my
lord's soul," they said, "and to perform a
work of
mercy."
"Dear fathers," replied
Budowa, "I thank my God that His Holy Spirit
has given me the assurance
that I will be saved through the blood of
the Lamb." He appealed to
the words of St. Paul: "I know whom I have
believed: henceforth there
is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness, which the
Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at
that
day."
"But," said the Jesuits,
"Paul there speaks of himself, not of
others."
"You lie," said Budowa,
"for does he not expressly add: 'and not to
me only, but unto all them
also that love his appearing.'"
And after a little more
argumentation, the Jesuits left in disgust.
The last moment in Budowa's
life now arrived. The messenger
came
and told him it was his
turn to die. He bade his friends
farewell.
"I go," he declared, "in
the garment of righteousness; thus arrayed
shall I appear before
God."
Alone, with firm step he
strode to the scaffold, stroking proudly
his silver hair and
beard.
"Thou old grey head of
mine," said he, "thou art highly honoured;
thou shalt be adorned with
the Martyr-Crown."
As he knelt and prayed he
was watched by the pitying eyes of the two
kind-hearted Jesuits who
had come to see him that morning.
He
prayed for his country, for
his Church, for his enemies, and
committed his soul to
Christ; the sword flashed brightly in the sun;
and one strong blow closed
the restless life of Wenzel von Budowa,
the "Last of the
Bohemians."
And with his death there
came the death of the Ancient Church of the
Brethren. From the moment when Budowa's hoary head
fell from the
block the destruction of
the Church was only a question of time.
As
Budowa died, so died the
others after him. We have no space
to tell
here in detail how his
bright example was followed; how nearly all
departed with the words
upon their lips, "Into Thy hands I commend
my spirit"; how the drums
beat louder each time before the sword
fell, that the people might
not hear the last words of triumphant
confidence in God; how
Caspar Kaplir, an old man of eighty-six,
staggered up to the
scaffold arrayed in a white robe, which he
called his wedding garment,
but was so weak that he could not hold
his head to the block; how
Otto von Los looked up and said, "Behold
I see the heavens opened";
how Dr. Jessen, the theologian, had his
tongue seized with a pair
of tongs, cut off at the roots with a
knife, and died with the
blood gushing from his mouth; how three
others were hanged on a
gallows in the Square; how the fearful work
went steadily on till the
last head had fallen, and the black
scaffold sweated blood; and
how the bodies of the chiefs were flung
into unconsecrated ground,
and their heads spitted on poles in the
city, there to grin for
full ten years as a warning to all who held
the Protestant faith. In all the story of the Brethren's
Church
there has been no other day
like that. It was the day when
the
furies seemed to ride
triumphant in the air, when the God of their
fathers seemed to mock at
the trial of the innocent, and when the
little Church that had
battled so bravely and so long was at last
stamped down by the heel of
the conqueror, till the life-blood
flowed no longer in her
veins.
Not, indeed, till the last
breath of Church life had gone did the
fearful stamping
cease. The zeal of Ferdinand knew
no bounds. He
was determined, not only to
crush the Brethren, but to wipe their
memory from off the face of
the earth. He regarded the Brethren
as
a noisome pest. Not a stone did he and his servants
leave unturned
to destroy them. They began with the churches. Instead of razing
them to the ground, which
would, of course, have been wanton waste,
they turned them into Roman
Catholic Chapels by the customary
methods of purification and
rededication. They rubbed out
the
inscriptions on the walls,
and put new ones in their places, lashed
the pulpits with whips,
beat the altars with sticks, sprinkled holy
water to cleanse the
buildings of heresy, opened the graves and
dishonoured the bones of
the dead. Where once was the cup
for
Communion was now the image
of the Virgin. Where once the
Brethren
had sung their hymns and
read their Bibles were now the Confessional
and the
Mass.
Meanwhile the Brethren had
been expelled from Bohemia. It is
a
striking proof of the
influence of the Brethren that Ferdinand
turned his attention to
them before he troubled about the other
Protestants. They had been the first in moral power;
they had done
the most to spread the
knowledge of the Bible; they had produced the
greatest literary men of
the country; and, therefore, now they must
be the first to go. What actually happened to many of the
Brethren
during the next few years
no tongue can tell. But we know
enough.
We know that Ferdinand cut
the Letter of Majesty in two with his
scissors. We know that thirty-six thousand
families left Bohemia
and Moravia, and that the
population of Bohemia dwindled from three
millions to one. We know that about one-half of the
property--
lands, houses, castles,
churches--passed over into the hands of the
King. We know that the
University of Prague was handed over to the
Jesuits. We know that the scandalous order was
issued that all
Protestant married
ministers who consented to join the Church of
Rome might keep their wives
by passing them off as cooks. We
know
that villages were sacked;
that Kralitz Bibles, Hymn-books,
Confessions, Catechisms,
and historical works of priceless value--
among others Blahoslaw's
"History of the Brethren"--were burned in
thousand; and that thus
nearly every trace of the Brethren was swept
out of the land. We know that some of the Brethren were
hacked in
pieces, that some were
tortured, that some were burned alive, that
some swung on gibbets at
the city gates and at the country
cross-roads among the
carrion crows. For six years
Bohemia was a
field of blood, and Spanish
soldiers, drunk and raging, slashed and
pillaged on every hand.
"Oh, to what torments," says a clergyman of
that day, "were the
promoters of the Gospel exposed!
How they were
tortured and
massacred! How many virgins were
violated to death!
How many respectable women
abused! How many children torn
from
their mothers' breasts and
cut in pieces in their presence!
How
many dragged from their
beds and thrown naked from the windows!
Good God! What cries of woe we were forced to hear
from those who
lay upon the rack, and what
groans and terrible outcries from those
who besought the robbers to
spare them for God's sake." It was
thus
that the Brethren, at the
point of the sword, were driven from
hearth and home: thus that
they fled before the blast and took
refuge in foreign lands;
thus, amid bloodshed, and crime, and
cruelty, and nameless
torture, that the Ancient Church of the
Bohemian Brethren bade a
sad farewell to the land of its birth, and
disappeared from the eyes
of mankind.
Let us review the story of
that wonderful Church. What a
marvellous
change had come upon
it! It began in the quiet little
valley of
Kunwald: it ended in the
noisy streets of Prague. It began
in peace
and brotherly love: it
ended amid the tramp of horses, the clank of
armour, the swish of
swords, the growl of artillery, the whistle of
bullets, the blare of
trumpets, the roll of drums, and the moans of
the wounded and the
dying. It began in the teaching of
the Sermon
on the Mount: it ended amid
the ghastly horrors of war. What
was it
that caused the destruction
of that Church? At this point
some
historians, being short of
facts, have thought fit to indulge in
philosophical reflections;
and, following the stale philosophy of
Bildad--that all suffering
is the punishment of sin--have informed
us that the Brethren were
now the victims of internal moral decay.
They had lost, we are told,
their sense of unity; they had relaxed
their discipline; they had
become morally weak; and the day of their
external prosperity was the
day of their internal decline. For
this
pious and utterly unfounded
opinion the evidence usually summoned is
the fact that Bishop Amos
Comenius, in a sermon entitled "Haggai
Redivivus," had some rather
severe remarks to make about the sins of
his Brethren. But Bishops' sermons are dangerous
historical
evidence. It is not the business of a preacher to
tell the whole
truth in one
discourse. He is not a witness in
the box; he is a
prophet aiming at some
special moral reform. If a Bishop
is
lecturing his Brethren for
their failings he is sure to indulge, not
exactly in exaggeration,
but in one-sided statements of the facts.
He will talk at length
about the sins, and say nothing about the
virtues. It is, of course, within the bounds of
possibility that
when the Brethren became
more prosperous they were not so strict in
some of their rules as they
had been in earlier days; and it is also
true that when Wenzel von
Budowa summoned his followers to arms, the
deed was enough, as one
writer remarks, to make Gregory the
Patriarch groan in his
grave. But of any serious moral
decline
there is no solid
proof. It is absurd to blame the
Brethren for
mixing in politics, and
absurd to say that this mixing was the cause
of their ruin. At that time in Bohemia religion and
politics were
inseparable. If a man took a definite stand in
religion he took
thereby a definite stand in
politics. To be a Protestant was to
be
a rebel. If Budowa had never lifted a finger, the
destruction of
the Brethren would have
been no less complete. The case of
Baron
Charles von Zerotin proves
the point. He took no part in
the
rebellion; he sided, in the
war, with the House of Hapsburg; he
endeavoured, that is, to
remain a Protestant and yet at the same
time a staunch supporter of
Ferdinand; and yet, loyal subject though
he was, he was not allowed,
except for a few years, to shelter
Protestant ministers in his
castle, and had finally to sell his
estates and to leave the
country. At heart, Comenius had a
high
opinion of his
Brethren. For nearly fifty weary
years--as we shall
see in the next
chapter--this genius and scholar longed and strove
for the revival of the
Brethren's Church, and in many of his books
he described the Brethren,
not as men who had disgraced their
profession, but as heroes
holding the faith in purity. He
described
his Brethren as
broad-minded men, who took no part in religious
quarrels, but looked
towards heaven, and bore themselves affably to
all; he said to the exiles
in one of his letters, "You have endured
to the end"; he described
them again, in a touching appeal addressed
to the Church of England,
as a model of Christian simplicity; and he
attributed their downfall
in Bohemia, not to any moral weakness, but
to their neglect of
education. If the Brethren, he
argued, had paid
more attention to learning,
they would have gained the support of
powerful friends, who would
not have allowed them to perish.
I
admit, of course, that
Comenius was naturally partial, and that when
he speaks in praise of the
Brethren we must receive his evidence
with caution; but, on the
other hand, I hold that the theory of a
serious moral decline, so
popular with certain German historians, is
not supported by
evidence. If the Brethren had shown
much sign of
corruption we should expect
to find full proof of the fact in the
Catholic writers of the
day. But such proof is not to
hand. Not
even the Jesuit historian,
Balbin, had anything serious to say
against the Brethren. The only Catholic writer, as far as I
know,
who attacked their
character was the famous Papal Nuncio, Carlo
Caraffa. He says that the Brethren in Moravia had
become a little
ambitious and avaricious,
"with some degree of luxury in their
habits of life";53 but he
has no remarks of a similar nature to make
about the Brethren in
Bohemia. The real cause of the fall
of the
Brethren was utterly
different. They fell, not because
they were
morally weak, but because
they were killed by the sword or forcibly
robbed of their
property. They fell because Bohemia
fell; and
Bohemia fell for a variety
of reasons; partly because her peasants
were serfs and had no fight
left in them; partly because her nobles
blundered in their choice
of a Protestant King; and partly because,
when all is said, she was
only a little country in the grip of a
mightier power. In some countries the Catholic reaction
was due to
genuine religious fervour;
in Bohemia it was brought about by brute
force; and even with all
his money and his men King Ferdinand found
the destruction of the
Brethren no easy task. He had the
whole
house of Hapsburg on his
side; he had thousands of mercenary
soldiers from Spain; he was
restrained by no scruples of conscience;
and yet it took him six
full years to drive the Brethren from the
country. And even then he had not completed his
work. In spite
of
his efforts, many thousands
of the people still remained Brethren at
heart; and as late as 1781,
when Joseph II. issued his Edict of
Toleration, 100,000 in
Bohemia and Moravia declared themselves
Brethren. We have here a genuine proof of the
Brethren's vigour.
It had been handed on from
father to son through five generations.
For the Brethren there was
still no legal recognition in Bohemia
and Moravia; the Edict
applied to Lutherans and Calvinists only; and
if the Brethren had been
weak men they might now have called
themselves Lutherans or
Calvinists. But this, of course,
carries us
beyond the limits of this
chapter. For the present King
Ferdinand
had triumphed; and word was
sent to the Pope at Rome that the Church
of the Brethren was no
more.
CHAPTER
XVI.
COMENIUS AND THE HIDDEN
SEED, 1627-1672.
But the cause of the
Brethren's Church was not yet lost.
As the
Brethren fled before the
blast, it befell, in the wonderful
providence of God, that all
their best and noblest qualities--their
broadness of view, their
care for the young, their patience in
suffering, their undaunted
faith--shone forth in undying splendour
in the life and character
of one great man; and that man was the
famous John Amos Comenius,
the pioneer of modern education and the
last Bishop of the Bohemian
Brethren. He was born on March
18th,
1592, at Trivnitz, a little
market town in Moravia. He was only
six
years old when he lost his
parents through the plague. He was
taken
in hand by his sister, and
was educated at the Brethren's School at
Ungarisch-Brod. As he soon
resolved to become a minister, he was
sent by the Brethren to
study theology, first at the Calvinist
University of Herborn in
Nassau, and then at the Calvinist
University of
Heidelberg. For two years
(1614-1616) he then acted
as master in the Brethren's
Higher School at Prerau, and then became
minister of the
congregation at Fulneck. There,
too, the Brethren
had a school; and there,
both as minister and teacher, Comenius,
with his young wife and
family, was as happy as the livelong day.
But his happiness was
speedily turned to misery. The
Thirty Years'
War broke out. What part he took in the Bohemian
Revolution we have
no means of knowing. He certainly favoured the election
of
Frederick, and helped his
cause in some way. "I contributed a nail
or two," he says,54 "to
strengthen the new throne." What
sort of
nail he means we do not
know. The new throne did not stand
very
long. The troops of Ferdinand appeared at
Fulneck. The village
was
sacked. Comenius reeled with horror. He saw the weapons
for
stabbing, for chopping, for
cutting, for pricking, for hacking, for
tearing and for
burning. He saw the savage hacking
of limbs, the
spurting of blood, the
flash of fire.
"Almighty God," he wrote in
one of his books, "what is happening?
Must the whole world
perish?"
His house was pillaged and
gutted; his books and his manuscripts
were burned; and he
himself, with his wife and children, had now to
flee in hot haste from
Fulneck and to take refuge for a while on the
estate of Baron Charles von
Zerotin at Brandeis-on-the-Adler.
To
the Brethren Brandeis had
long been a sacred spot. There
Gregory
the Patriarch had breathed
his last, and there his bones lay buried;
there many an historic
Brethren's Synod had been held; and there
Comenius took up his abode
in a little wood cottage outside the town
which tradition said had
been built by Gregory himself. He
had lost
his wife and one of his
children on the way from Fulneck; he had
lost his post as teacher
and minister; and now, for the sake of his
suffering Brethren, he
wrote his beautiful classical allegory, "The
Labyrinth of the World and
the Paradise of the Heart."55
For
historical purposes this
book is of surpassing value. It is
a
revelation. It is a picture both of the horrors of
the time and of
the deep religious life of
the Brethren. As Comenius fled
from
Fulneck to Brandeis he saw
sights that harrowed his soul, and now in
his cottage at the foot of
the hills he described what he had seen.
The whole land, said
Comenius, was now in a state of disorder.
The
reign of justice had
ended. The reign of pillage had
begun. The
plot of the book is
simple. From scene to scene the
pilgrim goes,
and everything fills him
with disgust. The pilgrim, of
course, is
Comenius himself; the
"Labyrinth" is Bohemia; and the time is the
early years of the Thirty
Years' War. He had studied the social
conditions of Bohemia; he
had seen men of all ranks and all
occupations; and now, in
witty, satirical language, he held the
mirror up to nature. What sort of men were employed by
Ferdinand to
administer justice in
Bohemia? Comenius gave them fine
sarcastic
names. He called the judges Nogod, Lovestrife,
Hearsay, Partial,
Loveself, Lovegold,
Takegift, Ignorant, Knowlittle, Hasty and
Slovenly; he called the
witnesses Calumny, Lie and Suspicion; and,
in obvious allusion to
Ferdinand's seizure of property, he named the
statute-book "The Rapacious
Defraudment of the Land." He saw the
lords oppressing the poor,
sitting long at table, and discussing
lewd and obscene
matters. He saw the rich idlers
with bloated
faces, with bleary eyes,
with swollen limbs, with bodies covered
with sores. He saw the moral world turned upside
down. No
longer,
said Comenius, did men in
Bohemia call things by their right names.
They called drunkenness,
merriment; greed, economy; usury,
interest; lust, love;
pride, dignity; cruelty, severity; and
laziness, good nature. He saw his Brethren maltreated in the
vilest
fashion. Some were cast into the fire; some were
hanged, beheaded,
crucified;56 some were
pierced, chopped, tortured with pincers, and
roasted to death on
grid-irons. He studied the lives of
professing
Christians, and found that
those who claimed the greatest piety were
the sorriest scoundrels in
the land. "They drink and vomit," he
said, "quarrel and fight,
rob and pillage one another by cunning and
by violence, neigh and skip
from wantonness, shout and whistle, and
commit fornication and
adultery worse than any of the others."
He
watched the priests, and
found them no better than the people.
Some
snored, wallowing in
feather beds; some feasted till they became
speechless; some performed
dances and leaps; some passed their time
in love-making and
wantonness.
For these evils Comenius
saw one remedy only, and that remedy was
the cultivation of the
simple and beautiful religion of the
Brethren. The last part of his book, "The Paradise
of the Heart,"
is delightful. Comenius was a marvellous writer. He combined the
biting satire of Swift with
the devotional tenderness of Thomas à
Kempis. As we linger over the closing sections
of his book, we can
see that he then regarded
the Brethren as almost ideal Christians.
Among them he found no
priests in gaudy attire, no flaunting
wealth, no grinding
poverty; and passing their time in peace and
quietness, they cherished
Christ in their hearts. "All," he says,
"were in simple attire, and
their ways were gentle and kind.
I
approached one of their
preachers, wishing to speak to him.
When,
as is our custom, I wished
to address him according to his rank, he
permitted it not, calling
such things worldly fooling." To
them
ceremonies were matters of
little importance. "Thy religion," said
the Master to the
Pilgrim--i.e., to the Brethren's Church--"shall be
to serve me in quiet, and
not to bind thyself to any ceremonies, for
I do not bind thee by
them."
But Comenius did not stay
long at Brandeis-on-the-Adler {1628.}.
As
Zerotin had sided with the
House of Hapsburg, he had been allowed,
for a few years, to give
shelter to about forty Brethren's
ministers; but now
commissioners appeared at his Castle, and ordered
him to send these ministers
away. The last band of exiles now
set
out for Poland. The leader was Comenius himself. As they bade
farewell to their native
land they did so in the firm conviction
that they themselves should
see the day when the Church of the
Brethren should stand once
more in her ancient home; and as they
stood on a spur of the
Giant Mountains, and saw the old loved hills
and dales, the towns and
hamlets, the nestling churches, Comenius
raised his eyes to heaven
and uttered that historic prayer which was
to have so marvellous an
answer. He prayed that in the old
home God
would preserve a "Hidden
Seed," which would one day grow to a tree;
and then the whole band
struck up a hymn and set out for Poland.
Pathetic was the marching
song they sang:--
Nought have we taken with
us,
All to destruction is
hurled,
We have only our Kralitz
Bibles,
And our Labyrinth of the
World.
Comenius led the Brethren
to Lissa, in Poland, and Lissa became the
metropolis of the
exiles.
What happened to many of
the exiles no tongue can tell. We
know
that some Brethren went to
Hungary and held together for thirty or
forty years; that some were
welcomed by the Elector of Saxony and
became Lutherans; that some
found their way to Holland and became
Reformed Protestants; that
some settled in Lusatia, Saxony; that a
few, such as the Cennicks,
crossed the silver streak and found a
home in England; and that,
finally, a number remained in Bohemia and
Moravia, and gathered in
the neighbourhood of Landskron,
Leitomischl, Kunewalde and
Fulneck. What became of these last,
the
"Hidden Seed," we shall see
before very long. For the present
they
buried their Bibles in
their gardens, held midnight meetings in
garrets and stables,
preserved their records in dovecotes and in the
thatched roofs of their
cottages, and, feasting on the glorious
promises of the Book of
Revelation--a book which many of them knew
by heart--awaited the time
when their troubles should blow by and
the call to arise should
sound.
Meanwhile Comenius had
never abandoned hope. He was sure
that the
Brethren's Church would
revive, and equally sure of the means of her
revival. For some years there had flourished in
the town of Lissa a
famous Grammar School. It was founded by Count Raphael
IV.
Leszczynski; it had
recently become a Higher School, or what
Germans call a gymnasium,
and now it was entirely in the hands of
the Brethren. The patron, Count Raphael V.
Leszczynski, was a
Brother;57 the director was
John Rybinski, a Brethren's minister;
the co-director was another
Brethren's minister, Michael Henrici;
and Comenius accepted the
post of teacher, and entered on the
greatest task of his
life. He had two objects before
him. He
designed to revive the
Church of the Brethren and to uplift the
whole human race; and for
each of these purposes he employed the
very same method. The method was education. If the Brethren,
said
Comenius, were to flourish
again, they must pay more attention to
the training of the young
than ever they had done in days gone by.
He issued detailed
instructions to his Brethren. They
must begin,
he said, by teaching the
children the pure word of God in their
homes. They must bring their children up in
habits of piety.
They
must maintain the ancient
discipline of the Brethren. They
must
live in peace with other
Christians, and avoid theological
bickerings. They must publish good books in the
Bohemian language.
They must build new schools
wherever possible, and endeavour to
obtain the assistance of
godly nobles. We have here the key
to the
whole of Comenius's
career. It is the fashion now with
many
scholars to divide his life
into two distinct parts. On the
one
hand, they say, he was a
Bishop of the Brethren's Church; on the
other hand he was an
educational reformer. The
distinction is false
and artificial. His whole life was of a piece. He never
distinguished between his
work as a Bishop and his work as an
educational reformer. He drew no line between the secular and
the
sacred. He loved the Brethren's Church to the
end of his days; he
regarded her teaching as
ideal; he laboured and longed for her
revival; and he believed
with all the sincerity of his noble and
beautiful soul that God
would surely enable him to revive that
Church by means of
education and uplift the world by means of that
regenerated
Church.
And now for thirteen years,
in the Grammar School at Lissa, Comenius
devoted the powers of his
mind to this tremendous task. What
was
it, he asked, that had
caused the downfall of the Brethren in
Bohemia and Moravia? It was their cruel and senseless system
of
education. He had been to a Brethren's School
himself, and had come
to the conclusion that in
point of method the schools of the
Brethren were no better
than the other schools of Europe. "They
are," he declared, "the
terror of boys and the slaughter-houses of
minds; places where a
hatred of literature and books is contracted,
where two or more years are
spent in learning what might be acquired
in one, where what ought to
be poured in gently is violently forced
and beaten in, and where
what ought to be put clearly is presented
in a confused and intricate
way as if it were a collection of
puzzles." The poor boys, he declared, were almost
frightened to
death. They needed skins of tin; they were
beaten with fists, with
canes and with birch-rods
till the blood streamed forth; they were
covered with scars,
stripes, spots and weals; and thus they had
learned to hate the schools
and all that was taught therein.
He had already tried to
introduce a reform. He had learned
his new
ideas about education, not
from the Brethren, but at the University
of Herborn. He had studied there the theories of
Wolfgang Ratich;
he had tried to carry out
these theories in the Brethren's schools
at Prerau and Fulneck; and
now at Lissa, where he soon became
director, he introduced
reforms which spread his fame throughout the
civilized world. His scheme was grand and
comprehensive. He
held
that if only right methods
were employed all things might be taught
to all men. "There is," he
said, "nothing in heaven or earth or in
the waters, nothing in the
abyss under the earth, nothing in the
human body, nothing in the
soul, nothing in Holy Writ, nothing in
the arts, nothing in
politics, nothing in the Church, of which the
little candidates for
wisdom shall be wholly ignorant."
His faith
in the power of education
was enormous. It was the road, he
said,
to knowledge, to character,
to fellowship with God, to eternal life.
He divided the educational
course into four stages--the "mother
school," the popular
school, the Latin school and the University;
and on each of these stages
he had something original to say.
For mothers Comenius wrote
a book, entitled the "School of Infancy."
In England this book is
scarcely known at all: in Bohemia it is a
household treasure. Comenius regarded it as a work of
first-rate
importance. What use, he asked, were schemes of
education if a good
foundation were not first
laid by the mother? For the first
six
years of his life, said
Comenius, the child must be taught by his
mother. If she did her work properly she could
teach him many
marvellous things. He would learn some physics by handling
things;
some optics by naming
colours, light and darkness; some astronomy by
studying the twinkling
stars; some geography by trudging the
neighbouring streets and
hills; some chronology by learning the
hours, the days and the
months; some history by a chat on local
events; some geometry by
measuring things for himself; some statics
by trying to balance his
top; some mechanics by building his little
toy-house; some dialectics
by asking questions; some economics by
observing his mother's
skill as a housekeeper; and some music and
poetry by singing psalms
and hymns. As Comenius penned these
ideal
instructions, he must
surely have known that nine mothers out of ten
had neither the patience
nor the skill to follow his method; and yet
he insisted that, in some
things, the mother had a clear course
before her. His advice was remarkably sound. At what age, ask
mothers, should the
education of a child begin? It
should begin,
said Comenius, before the
child is born. At that period in
her life
the expectant mother must
be busy and cheerful, be moderate in her
food, avoid all worry, and
keep in constant touch with God by
prayer; and thus the child
will come into the world well equipped
for the battle of
life. She must, of course, nurse
the child
herself. She must feed him, when weaned, on plain
and simple food.
She must provide him with
picture books; and, above all, she must
teach him to be clean in
his habits, to obey his superiors, to be
truthful and polite, to
bend the knee and fold his hands in prayer,
and to remember that the
God revealed in Christ was ever near at
hand.
Again, Comenius has been
justly called the "Father of the Elementary
School." It was here that his ideas had the
greatest practical
value. His first fundamental principle was that
in all elementary
schools the scholars must
learn in their native language only.
He
called these schools
"Mother tongue schools." For six or
eight
years, said Comenius, the
scholar must hear no language but his own;
and his whole attention
must be concentrated, not on learning words
like a parrot, but on the
direct study of nature. Comenius
has been
called the great
Sense-Realist. He had no belief in
learning
second-hand. He illustrated his books with
pictures. He gave
his
scholars object
lessons. He taught them, not about
words, but about
things. "The foundation of
all learning consists," he said, "in
representing clearly to the
senses sensible objects." He
insisted
that no boy or girl should
ever have to learn by heart anything
which he did not
understand. He insisted that nature
should be
studied, not out of books,
but by direct contact with nature
herself. "Do we not dwell
in the garden of nature," he asked, "as
well as the ancients? Why should we not use our eyes, ears
and
noses as well as they? Why should we not lay open the living
book
of nature?" He applied these ideas to the teaching
of religion and
morals. In order to show his scholars the
meaning of faith, he
wrote a play entitled
"Abraham the Patriarch," and then taught them
to act it; and, in order to
warn them against shallow views of life,
he wrote a comedy,
"Diogenes the Cynic, Revived." He
was no vulgar
materialist. His whole object was moral and
religious. If
Comenius
had lived in the twentieth
century, he would certainly have been
disgusted and shocked by
the modern demand for a purely secular
education. He would have regarded the suggestion as
an insult to
human nature. All men, he said, were made in the image
of God; all
men had in them the roots
of eternal wisdom; all men were capable of
understanding something of
the nature of God; and, therefore, the
whole object of education
was to develop, not only the physical and
intellectual, but also the
moral and spiritual powers, and thus fit
men and women to be, first,
useful citizens in the State, and then
saints in the Kingdom of
Heaven beyond the tomb. From court
to
court he would lead the
students onward, from the first court
dealing with nature to the
last court dealing with God. "It is," he
said, "our bounden duty to
consider the means whereby the whole body
of Christian youth may be
stirred to vigour of mind and the love of
heavenly things." He believed in caring for the body,
because the
body was the temple of the
Holy Ghost; and, in order to keep the
body fit, he laid down the
rule that four hours of study a day was
as much as any boy or girl
could stand. For the same reason
he
objected to corporal
punishment; it was a degrading insult to God's
fair abode. For the same reason he held that at all
severe
punishment should be
reserved for moral offences only. "The whole
object of discipline," he
said, "is to form in those committed to
our charge a disposition
worthy of the children of God." He
believed, in a word, in the
teaching of religion in day-schools; he
believed in opening school
with morning prayers, and he held that
all scholars should be
taught to say passages of Scripture by heart,
to sing psalms, to learn a
Catechism and to place their trust in the
salvation offered through
Jesus Christ. And yet Comenius did
not
insist on the teaching of
any definite religious creed. He
belonged
himself to a Church that
had no creed; he took a broader view of
religion than either the
Lutherans or the Calvinists; he believed
that Christianity could be
taught without a formal dogmatic
statement; and thus, if I
understand him aright, he suggested a
solution of a difficult
problem which baffles our cleverest
politicians
to-day.
Again Comenius introduced a
new way of learning languages.
His
great work on this subject
was entitled "Janua Linguarum
Reserata"--i.e., The Gate
of Languages Unlocked. Of all his
works
this was the most
popular. It spread his fame all
over Europe.
It
was translated into fifteen
different languages. It became,
next to
the Bible, the most widely
known book on the Continent. For
one
person who read his
delightful "Labyrinth," there were thousands who
nearly knew the "Janua" by
heart. The reason was obvious. The
"Labyrinth" was a religious
book, and was suppressed as dangerous by
Catholic authorities; but
the "Janua" was only a harmless grammar,
and could be admitted with
safety anywhere. It is not the
works of
richest genius that have
the largest sale; it is the books that
enable men to get on in
life; and the "Janua" was popular because,
in truth, "it supplied a
long-felt want." It was a Latin
grammar of
a novel and original
kind. For all boys desiring to
enter a
profession a thorough
knowledge of Latin was then an absolute
necessity. It was the language in which the learned
conversed, the
language spoken at all
Universities, the language of diplomatists
and statesmen, the language
of scientific treatises. If a man
could
make the learning of Latin
easier, he was adored as a public
benefactor. Comenius's Grammar was hailed with
delight, as a boon
and a blessing to men. For years all patient students of Latin
had
writhed in agonies
untold. They had learned long lists
of Latin
words, with their meanings;
they had wrestled in their teens with
gerunds, supines, ablative
absolutes and distracting rules about the
subjunctive mood, and they
had tried in vain to take an interest in
stately authors far above
their understanding. Comenius
reversed
the whole process. What is the use, he asked, of learning
lists of
words that have no
connection with each other? What is
the use of
teaching a lad grammar
before he has a working knowledge of the
language? What is the use of expecting a boy to
take an interest in
the political arguments of
Cicero or the dinner table wisdom of
Horace? His method was the conversational. For beginners he
prepared an elementary
Latin Grammar, containing, besides a few
necessary rules, a number
of sentences dealing with events and
scenes of everyday
life. It was divided into seven
parts. In the
first were nouns and
adjectives together; in the second nouns and
verbs; in the third
adverbs, pronouns, numerals and prepositions; in
the fourth remarks about
things in the school; in the fifth about
things in the house; in the
sixth about things in the town; in the
seventh some moral
maxims. And the scholar went
through this book
ten times before he passed
on to the "Janua" proper. The
result can
be imagined. At the end of a year the boy's knowledge
of Latin
would be of a peculiar
kind. Of grammar he would know but
little;
of words and phrases he
would have a goodly store; and thus he was
learning to talk the
language before he had even heard of its
perplexing rules. One example must suffice to illustrate
the
method. The beginner did not even learn the
names of the cases.
In
a modern English Latin
Grammar, the charming sight that meets our
gaze is as
follows:--
Nom. Mensa.--A
table.
Voc. Mensa.--Oh,
table!
Acc. Mensam.--A
table.
Gen. Mensæ.--Of a
table.
Dat. Mensæ.--To or for a
table.
Abl. Mensa.--By, with or from a
table.
The method of Comenius was
different. Instead of mentioning
the
names of the cases, he
showed how the cases were actually used, as
follows:--
Ecce, tabula nigra.--Look there, a black board.
O tu tabula nigra.--Oh, you black
board!
Video tabulam nigram.--I see a
black board.
Pars tabulæ nigræ.--Part of a
black board.
Addo partem tabulæ nigræ.--I add a
part to a black board.
Vides aliquid in tabula nigra.--I
see something on a black board.
With us the method is
theory first, practice afterwards; with
Comenius the method was
practice first, theory afterwards; and the
method of Comenius, with
modifications, is likely to be the method
of the
future.
But Comenius's greatest
educational work was undoubtedly his "Great
Didactic," or the "Art of
Teaching All Things to All Men." It was a
thorough and comprehensive
treatise on the whole science, method,
scope and purpose of
universal education. As this book
has been
recently translated into
English, I need not here attempt the task
of giving an outline of its
contents. His ideas were far too
grand
and noble to put in summary
form. For us the point of interest
is
the fact that while the
Thirty Years' War was raging, and warriors
like Wallenstein and
Gustavus Adolphus were turning Europe into a
desert, this scholar,
banished from his native land, was devising
sublime and broad-minded
schemes for the elevation of the whole
human race. It is this that makes Comenius
great. He played
no
part in the disgraceful
quarrels of the age; he breathed no
complaint against his
persecutors. "Comenius," said the Jesuit
historian Balbin, "wrote
many works, but none that were directed
against the Catholic
Church." As he looked around upon
the learned
world he saw the great
monster Confusion still unslain, and intended
to found a Grand Universal
College, which would consist of all the
learned in Europe, would
devote its attention to the pursuit of
knowledge in every
conceivable branch, and would arrange that
knowledge in beautiful
order and make the garden of wisdom a trim
parterre. He was so sure that his system was right
that he compared
it to a great clock or
mill, which had only to be set going to bring
about the desired
result. If his scheme could only be
carried out,
what a change there would
be in this dreary earth! What a
speedy
end to wars and rumours of
wars! What a blessed cessation
of
religious disputes! What a glorious union of all men of all
nations
about the feet of
God!
At last Comenius became so
famous that his friend, Samuel Hartlib,
invited him to England; and
Comenius found upon his arrival that our
English Parliament was
interested in his scheme {1641.}.
His hopes
now rose higher than
ever. At last, he thought, he had
found a spot
where he could actually
carry out his grand designs. He had
a high
opinion of English piety.
"The ardour," he wrote, "with which the
people crowd to the
Churches is incredible. Almost all
bring a copy
of the Bible with
them. Of the youths and men a large
number take
down the sermons word by
word with their pens. Their thirst
for the
word of God is so great
that many of the nobles, citizens also, and
matrons study Greek and
Hebrew to be able more safely and more
sweetly to drink from the
very spring of life." Of all
countries
England seemed to him the
best suited for the accomplishment of his
designs. He discussed the project with John Dury,
with Samuel
Hartlib, with John Evelyn,
with the Bishop of Lincoln, and probably
with John Milton. He wanted to establish an "Academy of
Pansophy"
at Chelsea; and there all
the wisest men in the world would meet,
draw up a new universal
language, like the framers of Esperanto
to-day, and devise a scheme
to keep all the nations at peace.
His
castle in the air
collapsed. At the very time when
Comenius was
resident in London this
country was on the eve of a revolution.
The
Irish Rebellion broke out,
the Civil War trod on its heels, and
Comenius left England for
ever.
>From this moment his
life was a series of bitter and cruel
disappointments. As the Thirty Years' War flickered out
to its
close, Comenius began to
look forward to the day when the Brethren
would be allowed to return
to Bohemia and Moravia {1648.}. But
the
Peace of Westphalia broke
his heart. What provision was made
in
that famous Peace for the
poor exiled Brethren? Absolutely
none.
Comenius was angry and
disgusted. He had spent his life in
the
service of humanity; he had
spent six years preparing school books
for the Swedish Government;
and now he complained-- perhaps
unjustly--that Oxenstierna,
the Swedish Chancellor, had never lifted
a finger on behalf of the
Brethren.
And yet Comenius continued
to hope against hope. The more
basely
the Brethren were deserted
by men, the more certain he was that they
would be defended by God.
He wrote to Oxenstierna on the subject.
"If there is no help from
man," he said, "there will be from God,
whose aid is wont to
commence when that of man ceases."
For eight years the
Brethren, undaunted still, held on together as
best they could at Lissa;
and Comenius, now their chosen leader,
made a brave attempt to
revive their schools in Hungary.
And then
came the final, awful
crash. The flames of war burst out
afresh.
When Charles X. became King
of Sweden, John Casimir, King of
Poland, set up a claim to
the Swedish throne. The two
monarchs went
to war. Charles X. invaded Poland; John Casimir
fled from Lissa;
Charles X. occupied the
town. What part, it may be asked,
did the
Brethren play in this
war? We do not know. As Charles X. was,
of
course, a Protestant, it is
natural to assume that the Brethren
sympathised with his cause
and hailed him as a deliverer sent by
God; but it is one of the
strangest features of their history that
we never can tell what part
they took in these political conflicts.
Comenius was now in
Lissa. It is said that he openly
sided with
Charles X., and urged the
Brethren to hold out to the bitter end.
I
doubt it. For a while the Swedish army
triumphed. In that army
was
an old Bohemian general,
who swore to avenge the "Day of Blood"; and
the churches and convents
were plundered, and monks and priests were
murdered. For a moment the Day of Blood was
avenged, but for a
moment only. As the arm of flesh had failed the
Brethren in the
days of Budowa, so the arm
of flesh failed them now.
The Polish army surrounded
the walls of Lissa {1656.}. A
panic
broke out among the
citizens. The Swedish garrison gave
way. The
Polish soldiers pressed
in. Again Comenius's library was
burned,
and the grammar school
where he had taught was reduced to ashes.
The whole town was soon in
flames. The fire spread for miles
in
the surrounding
country. As the Brethren fled from
their last fond
home, with the women and
children huddled in waggons, they saw barns
and windmills flaring
around them, and heard the tramp of the Polish
army in hot pursuit. As Pastor John Jacobides and two
Acoluths were
on their way to Karmin,
they were seized, cut down with spades and
thrown into a pit to
perish. For Samuel Kardus, the last
martyr of
the fluttering fragment, a
more ingenious torture was reserved.
He
was placed with his head
between a door and the door-post, and as
the door was gently but
firmly closed, his head was slowly crushed
to
pieces.
And so the hopes of
Comenius were blasted. As the aged
Bishop drew
near to his end, he
witnessed the failure of all his schemes.
Where
now was his beloved Church
of the Brethren? It was scattered
like
autumn leaves before the
blast. And yet Comenius hoped on to
the
bitter end. The news of his sufferings reached the
ears of Oliver
Cromwell. He offered to find a home for the
Brethren in Ireland.
If Comenius had only
accepted that offer it is certain that Oliver
would have been as good as
his word. He longed to make Ireland
a
Protestant country; and the
whole modern history of Ireland might
have been altered. But Comenius had now become an
unpractical
dreamer. For all his learning he was very
simple-minded; and for
all his piety he had a weak
side to his character. He had
listened
in his youth to the
prophecies of Christopher Kotter; he had
listened also to the
ravings of Christina Poniatowski; and now he
fell completely under the
influence of the vile impostor, Drabik,
who pretended to have a
revelation from heaven, and predicted that
before very long the House
of Austria would be destroyed and the
Brethren be enabled to
return to their native home.
Instead,
therefore, of accepting
Cromwell's offer, Comenius spent his last
few years in collecting
money for the Brethren; and pleasant it is
to record the fact that
much of that money came from England.
Some
was sent by Prince Rupert,
and some by officials of the Church of
England; and Comenius was
able to spend the money in printing
helpful, devotional works
for the Brethren. His loyalty now
to the
Brethren was
beautiful. It is easy to be
faithful to a prosperous
Church; Comenius was
faithful when the whirl was at the worst.
Faster than ever the ship
was sinking, but still the brave old
white-haired Captain held
to his post on the bridge. Few
things are
more pathetic in history
than the way in which Comenius commended
the Brethren to the care of
the Church of England. "To you, dear
friends," he wrote in hope,
"we commit our dear mother, the Church
herself. Even in her death, which seems
approaching, you ought to
love her, because in her
life she has gone before you for more than
two centuries with examples
of faith and patience." Of all
the
links between the old
Church of the Brethren and the new, Comenius
was the strongest. He handed on the Brethren's Episcopal
Orders.
He consecrated his
son-in-law, Peter Jablonsky; this Peter
consecrated his own son,
Daniel Ernest; and this Daniel Ernest
Jablonsky consecrated David
Nitschmann, the first Bishop of the
Renewed Church of the
Brethren.
He handed on, secondly, the
Brethren's system of discipline.
He
published an edition of the
"Ratio Disciplinæ," and this it was that
fired Zinzendorf's soul
with love for the Brethren's Church.
But, thirdly, and most
important of all, Comenius kept the old faith
burning in the hearts of
the "Hidden Seed." For the benefit of those
still worshipping in secret
in Bohemia and Moravia, he prepared a
Catechism, entitled "The
Old Catholic Christian Religion in Short
Questions and Answers"; and
by this Catholic Religion he meant the
broad and simple faith of
the Bohemian Brethren. "Perish sects,"
said Comenius; "perish the
founders of sects. I have
consecrated
myself to Christ
alone." But the purpose of the
Catechism had to be
kept a secret. "It is
meant," said Comenius, in the preface, "for
all the pious and scattered
sheep of Christ, especially those at F.,
G., G., K., K., S., S. and
Z." These letters can be easily
explained. They stood for the villages of Fulneck,
Gersdorf,
Gestersdorf, Kunewalde,
Klandorf, Stechwalde, Seitendorf and
Zauchtenthal; and these are
the places from which the first exiles
came to renew the
Brethren's Church at Herrnhut.
Fifty years before his
prayers were answered, Comenius lay silent in
the grave (1672). Yet never did bread cast upon the waters
more
richly
return.
SUPPLEMENTARY
NOTE.
THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN AND
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
As the relations of the
Brethren with England were only of a very
occasional nature, it is
not easy to weave them into the narrative.
But the following
particulars will be of special interest; they
show the opinion held of
the Brethren by officials of the Church of
England:--
1. The case of John
Bernard.--At some period in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth a number of
scholarships were founded at Oxford for the
benefit of Bohemian
students; and in 1583 John Bernard, a Moravian
student, took his B.D.
degree at Oxford. The record in
the
University Register is as
follows: "Bernardus, John, a Moravian, was
allowed to supply B.D. He
had studied theology for ten years at
German Universities, and
was now going to the Universities of
Scotland." This proves that the University of
Oxford recognised
Bernard as a man in holy
orders; for none but men in holy orders
could take the B.D.
degree.
2. The case of Paul
Hartmann.--In 1652 (October 15th) Paul Hartmann
was ordained a Deacon at a
Synod of the Moravian Church at Lissa.
In 1657 he came to England,
along with his brother, Adam Samuel
Hartmann, to raise funds
for the exiles. In 1660 he was
ordained a
Presbyter by Bishop Robert
Skinner, of Oxford, in Christ Church; in
1671 he was admitted
Chaplain or Petty Canon of Oxford Cathedral;
and in 1676 he became
Rector of Shillingford, Berkshire.
This
proves that Bishop Skinner,
of Oxford, recognised Paul Hartmann's
status as a Deacon; and
that recognition, so far as we know, was
never questioned by any
Anglican authorities. But that is
not the
end of the story. At this period a considerable number of
Brethren
had found a home in
England; the Continental Brethren wished to
provide for their spiritual
needs, and, therefore, in 1675 they
wrote a letter to the
Anglican Bishops requesting them to consecrate
Hartmann a Bishop. Of that letter a copy has been preserved
in the
Johannis-Kirche at Lissa.
"It is no superstition," they wrote, "that
fills us with this
desire. It is simply our love of
order and
piety; and the Church of
England is the only Protestant Church
beside our own that
possesses this treasure, and can, therefore,
come to our help." For some reason, however, this pathetic
request
was not carried out. What answer did the Anglican Bishops
give? We
do not know; no answer has
been discovered; and Hartmann remained a
Presbyter to the
end.
3. The case of Adam Samuel
Hartmann.--He was first a minister of the
Moravian Church at Lissa
(1652-56). In 1657 he came to
England to
collect money; in 1673 he
was consecrated a Moravian Bishop at
Lissa; and in 1680 he
received the degree of D.D. at Oxford.
His
diploma refers to him as a
Bishop. This suggests, if it does
not
actually prove, that the
University of Oxford recognised him as a
valid
Bishop.
4. The case of Bishop Amos
Comenius.--Of all the Bishops of the
Bohemian Brethren Comenius
did most to stir up sympathy on their
behalf in England. In 1657 he sent the two Hartmanns and
Paul
Cyrill to the Archbishop of
Canterbury with a MS. entitled, "Ultimus
in Protestantes Bohemiæ
confessionis ecclesias Antichristi furor";
in 1660 he dedicated his
"Ratio Disciplinæ" to the Church of
England; and in 1661 he
published his "Exhortation of the Churches
of Bohemia to the Church of
England." In this book Comenius
took a
remarkable stand. He declared that the Slavonian Churches
had been
planted by the Apostles;
that these Churches had "run up to a head
and ripened" in the Unity
of the Brethren; and that he himself was
now the only surviving
Bishop of the remnants of these Churches.
In
other words, he represented
himself as the Bishop of a Church of
Apostolic origin. In what way, it may be asked, was this
claim
received by Anglican
authorities? The next case will
supply the
answer.
5. The case of Archbishop
Sancroft.--ln 1683 King Charles II. issued
a Cabinet Order on behalf
of the Brethren; the order was accompanied
by an account of their
distresses; the account was "recommended
under the hands" of William
Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and
Henry Compton, Bishop of
London; and in that account the statement
was deliberately made that
the Brethren deserved the assistance of
Anglicans, not only because
they had "renounced the growing errors
of Popery," but also
because they had "preserved the Succession of
Episcopal Orders." The last words can only bear one
meaning; and
that meaning obviously is
that both the Primate and the Bishop of
London regarded Moravian
Episcopal Orders as valid. The next
case
tells a similar
story.
6. The case of Archbishop
Wake.--We have now to step over a period
of thirty-three years. As soon as James II. came to the throne,
the
interest of English
Churchmen in the Brethren appears to have waned,
and neither William III.
nor Queen Anne took any steps on their
behalf. And yet the connection of the Brethren
with England was not
entirely broken. The bond of union was Daniel Ernest
Jablonsky. He
was Amos Comenius's
grandson. In 1680 he came to
England; he
studied three years at
Oxford, and finally received the degree of
D.D. In 1693 he was
appointed Court Preacher at Berlin; in 1699 he
was consecrated a Moravian
Bishop; and in 1709 he was elected
corresponding secretary of
the S.P.C.K. Meanwhile, however, fresh
disasters had overtaken the
Brethren. As the sun was rising on
July
29th, 1707, a troop of
Russians rode into the town of Lissa, and
threw around them balls of
burning pitch. The town went up
in
flames; the last home of
the Brethren was destroyed, and the
Brethren were in greater
distress than ever. At this
point
Jablonsky nobly came to
their aid. He began by publishing
an
account of their
distresses; he tried to raise a fund on their
behalf; and finally (1715)
he sent his friend, Bishop Sitkovius, to
England, to lay their case
before Archbishop Wake. Again, as in the
case of Archbishop
Sancroft, this appeal to the Church of England
was successful. The Archbishop brought the case before
George I.,
the King consulted the
Privy Council, the Privy Council gave
consent; the King issued
Letters Patent to all the Archbishops and
Bishops of England and
Wales, and Wake and John Robinson, Bishop of
London, issued a special
appeal, which was read in all the London
churches. The result was twofold. On the one hand money
was
collected for the Brethren;
on the other, some person or persons
unknown denounced them as
Hussites, declared that their Bishops
could not be distinguished
from Presbyters, and contended that,
being followers of
Wycliffe, they must surely, like Wycliffe, be
enemies of all episcopal
government. Again Jablonsky came to
the
Brethren's rescue. He believed, himself, in the
Brethren's
Episcopal Orders; he
prepared a treatise on the subject, entitled,
"De Ordine et Successione
Episcopali in Unitate Fratrum Bohemorum
conservato"; he sent a copy
of that treatise to Wake, and Wake, in
reply, declared himself
perfectly satisfied.
To what conclusion do the
foregoing details point? It is
needful
here to speak with caution
and precision. As the claims of
the
Brethren were never brought
before Convocation, we cannot say that
the Anglican Church as a
body officially recognised the Brethren as
a sister Episcopal
Church. But, on the other hand, we
can also say
that the Brethren's orders
were never doubted by any Anglican
authorities. They were recognised by two Archbishops
of Canterbury;
they were recognised by
Bishop Skinner, of Oxford; they were
recognised by the
University of Oxford. They were
recognised, in a
word, by every Anglican
authority before whose notice they happened
to be
brought.
BOOK
TWO.
The Revival under
Zinzendorf.
CHAPTER
I.
THE YOUTH OF COUNT
ZINZENDORF, 1700-1722.
If the kindly reader will
take the trouble to consult a map of
Europe he will see that
that part of the Kingdom of Saxony known as
Upper Lusatia runs down to
the Bohemian frontier. About ten
miles
from the frontier line
there stand to-day the mouldering remains of
the old castle of
Gross-Hennersdorf. The grey old
walls are
streaked with slime. The wooden floors are rotten, shaky
and
unsafe. The rafters are worm-eaten. The windows are broken. The
damp wall-papers are
running to a sickly green. Of roof
there is
almost none. For the lover of beauty or the landscape
painter these
ruins have little
charm. But to us these tottering
walls are of
matchless interest, for
within these walls Count Zinzendorf, the
Renewer of the Brethren's
Church, spent the years of his childhood.
He was born at six o'clock
in the evening, Wednesday, May 26th,
1700, in the picturesque
city of Dresden {1700.}; the house is
pointed out to the visitor;
and "Zinzendorf Street" reminds us still
of the noble family that
has now died out. He was only six
weeks
old when his father burst a
blood-vessel and died; he was only four
years when his mother
married again; and the young Count--Nicholas
Lewis, Count of Zinzendorf
and Pottendorf--was handed over to the
tender care of his
grandmother, Catherine von Gersdorf, who lived at
Gross-Hennersdorf
Castle. And now, even in
childhood's days, little
Lutz, as his grandmother
loved to call him, began to show signs of
his coming greatness. As his father lay on his dying bed, he
had
taken the child in his
feeble arm, and consecrated him to the
service of Christ; and now
in his grandmother's noble home he sat at
the feet of the learned,
the pious, and the refined. Never
was a
child less petted and
pampered; never was a child more strictly
trained; never was a child
made more familiar with the person and
teaching of Jesus
Christ. Dr. Spener,58 the famous
Pietist leader,
watched his growth with
fatherly interest. The old lady was
a
leader in Pietist circles,
was a writer of beautiful religious
poetry, and guarded him as
the apple of her eye. He read the
Bible
every day. He doted on Luther's Catechism. He had the Gospel
story
at his finger-ends. His aunt Henrietta, who was rather an
oddity,
prayed with him morning and
night. His tutor, Edeling, was
an
earnest young Pietist from
Franke's school at Halle; and the story
of Zinzendorf's early days
reads like a mediaeval tale. "Already in
my childhood," he says,
{1704.} "I loved the Saviour, and had
abundant communion with
Him. In my fourth year I began to seek God
earnestly, and determined
to become a true servant of Jesus Christ."
At the age of six he
regarded Christ as his Brother, would talk
with Him for hours together
as with a familiar friend and was often
found rapt in thought
{1706.}, like Socrates in the market-place at
Athens. As other children love and trust their
parents, so this
bright lad with the golden
hair loved and trusted Christ. "A
thousand times," he said,
"I heard Him speak in my heart, and saw
Him with the eye of
faith." Already the keynote of his
life was
struck; already the fire of
zeal burned in his bosom. "Of all the
qualities of Christ," said
He, "the greatest is His nobility; and of
all the noble ideas in the
world, the noblest is the idea that the
Creator should die for His
children. If the Lord were forsaken
by
all the world, I still
would cling to Him and love Him." He held
prayer-meetings in his
private room. He was sure that
Christ
Himself was present
there. He preached sermons to
companies of
friends. If hearers failed, he arranged the
chairs as an audience;
and still is shown the
little window from which he threw letters
addressed to Christ, not
doubting that Christ would receive them.
As the child was engaged
one day in prayer, the rude soldiers of
Charles XII. burst into his
room. Forthwith the lad began to
speak
of Christ; and away the
soldiers fled in awe and terror. At
the age
of eight he lay awake at
night tormented with atheistic doubts
{1708.}. But the doubts did not last long. However much he
doubted
with the head he never
doubted with the heart; and the charm that
drove the doubts away was
the figure of the living Christ.
And here we touch the
springs of the boy's religion. It
is easy to
call all this a hot-house
process; it is easy to dub the child a
precocious prig. But at bottom his religion was healthy
and sound.
It was not morbid; it was
joyful. It was not based on
dreamy
imagination; it was based
on the historic person of Christ.
It was
not the result of mystic
exaltation; it was the result of a study of
the Gospels. It was not, above all, self-centred; it
led him to
seek for fellowship with
others. As the boy devoured the
Gospel
story, he was impressed
first by the drama of the Crucifixion; and
often pondered on the words
of Gerhardt's hymn:--
O Head so full of
bruises,
So full of pain and
scorn,
'Midst other sore
abuses,
Mocked with a crown of
thorn.
For this his tutor,
Edeling, was partly responsible. "He spoke to
me," says Zinzendorf, "of
Jesus and His wounds."
But the boy did not linger
in Holy Week for ever. He began
by
laying stress on the
suffering Christ; he went on to lay stress on
the whole life of Christ;
and on that life, from the cradle to the
grave, his own strong faith
was based. "I was," he said, "as certain
that the Son of God was my
Lord as of the existence of my five
fingers." To him the existence of Jesus was a
proof of the
existence of God; and he
felt all his limbs ablaze, to use his own
expression, with the desire
to preach the eternal Godhead of Christ.
"If it were possible," he
said, "that there should be another God
than Christ I would rather
be damned with Christ than happy with
another. I have," he exclaimed, "but one
passion--'tis He, 'tis
only
He."
But the next stage in his
journey was not so pleasing {1710.}.
At
the age of ten he was taken
by his mother to Professor Franke's
school at Halle; and by
mistake he overheard a conversation between
her and the pious
professor. She described him as a
lad of parts,
but full of pride, and in
need of the curbing rein. He was
soon to
find how much these words
implied. If a boy has been trained
by
gentle ladies he is hardly
well equipped, as a rule, to stand the
rough horseplay of a
boarding-school; and if, in addition, he boasts
blue blood, he is sure to
come in for blows. And the Count
was a
delicate aristocrat, with
weak legs and a cough. He was proud
of
his noble birth; he was
rather officious in his manner; he had his
meals at Franke's private
table; he had private lodgings a few
minutes' walk from the
school; he had plenty of money in his purse;
and, therefore, on the
whole, he was as well detested as the son of
a lord can be. "With a few
exceptions," he sadly says, "my
schoolfellows hated me
throughout."
But this was not the
bitterest part of the pill. If
there was any
wholesome feeling missing
in his heart hitherto, it was what
theologians call the sense
of sin. He had no sense of sin
whatever,
and no sense of any need of
pardon. His masters soon proceeded
to
humble his pride. He was introduced as a smug little
Pharisee, and
they treated him as a
viper. Of all systems of school
discipline,
the most revolting is the
system of employing spies; and that was
the system used by the
staff at Halle. They placed the
young Count
under boyish police
supervision, encouraged the lads to tell tales
about him, rebuked him for
his misconduct in the measles, lectured
him before the whole school
on his rank disgusting offences, and
treated him as half a rogue
and half an idiot. If he pleaded
not
guilty, they called him a
liar, and gave him an extra thrashing.
The thrashing was a public
school entertainment, and was advertised
on the school notice-board.
"Next week," ran the notice on one
occasion, "the Count is to
have the stick." For two years he
lived
in a moral purgatory. The masters gave him the fire of their
wrath,
and the boys the cold
shoulder of contempt. The masters
called him
a malicious rebel, and the
boys called him a snob. As the
little
fellow set off for morning
school, with his pile of books upon his
arm, the others waylaid
him, jostled him to and fro, knocked him
into the gutter, scattered
his books on the street, and then
officiously reported him
late for school. He was clever,
and,
therefore, the masters
called him idle; and when he did not know his
lesson they made him stand
in the street, with a pair of ass's ears
on his head, and a placard
on his back proclaiming to the public
that the culprit was a
"lazy donkey."
His private tutor, Daniel
Crisenius, was a bully, who had made his
way into Franke's school by
varnishing himself with a shiny coating
of piety. If the Count's relations came to see
him, Crisenius made
him beg for money, and then
took the money himself. If
his
grandmother sent him a
ducat Crisenius pocketed a florin.
If he
wrote a letter home,
Crisenius read it. If he drank a
cup of
coffee, Crisenius would
say, "You have me to thank for that, let me
hear you sing a song of
thanksgiving." If he tried to pour
out his
soul in prayer, Crisenius
mocked him, interrupted him, and
introduced disgusting
topics of conversation. He even
made the lad
appear a sneak. "My tutor,"
says Zinzendorf, "often persuaded me to
write letters to my
guardian complaining of my hard treatment, and
then showed the letters to
the inspector."
In vain little Lutz laid
his case before his mother.
Crisenius
thrashed him to such good
purpose that he never dared to complain
again; and his mother still
held that he needed drastic medicine. "I
beseech you," she wrote to
Franke, "be severe with the lad; if
talking will not cure him
of lying, then let him feel it."
At last the muddy lane
broadened into a highway. One day
Crisenius
pestered Franke with one of
his whining complaints. The
headmaster
snapped him
short.
"I am sick," he said, "of
your growlings; you must manage the matter
yourself."
As the months rolled on,
the Count breathed purer air. He
became
more manly and bold. He astonished the masters by his
progress. He
was learning Greek, could
speak in French and dash off letters in
Latin. He was confirmed, attended the
Communion, and wrote a
beautiful hymn59 recording
his feelings; and already in his modest
way he launched out on that
ocean of evangelical toil on which he
was to sail all the days of
his life.
As the child grew up in
Hennersdorf Castle he saw and heard a good
deal of those drawing-room
meetings60 which Philip Spener, the
Pietist leader, had
established in the houses of several noble
Lutheran families, and
which came in time to be known in Germany as
"Churches within the
Church."61 He knew that Spener had
been his
father's friend. He had met the great leader at the
Castle. He
sympathised with the
purpose of his meetings. He had
often longed
for fellowship himself, and
had chatted freely on religious topics
with his Aunt
Henrietta. He had always maintained
his private habit
of personal communion with
Christ; and now he wished to share his
religion with others. The time was ripe. The moral state of
Franke's school was low;
the boys were given to vicious habits, and
tried to corrupt his soul;
and the Count, who was a healthy minded
boy, and shrank with
disgust from fleshly sins, retorted by forming
a number of religious clubs
for mutual encouragement and help. "I
established little
societies," he says, "in which we spoke of the
grace of Christ, and
encouraged each other in diligence and good
works." He became a healthy moral force in the
school. He
rescued
his friend, Count Frederick
de Watteville, from the hands of fifty
seducers; he persuaded
three others to join in the work of rescue;
and the five lads
established a club which became a "Church within
the Church" for boys. They called themselves first "The Slaves
of
Virtue," next the
"Confessors of Christ," and finally the
"Honourable Order of the
Mustard Seed"; and they took a pledge to be
true to Christ, to be
upright and moral, and to do good to their
fellow-men. Of all the school clubs established by
Zinzendorf this
"Order of the Mustard Seed"
was the most famous and the most
enduring. As the boys grew up to man's estate they
invited others
to join their ranks; the
doctrinal basis was broad; and among the
members in later years were
John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury,
Thomas Wilson, Bishop of
Sodor and Man, Cardinal Noailles, the
broad-minded Catholic, and
General Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia.
For an emblem they had a
small shield, with an "Ecce Homo," and the
motto, "His wounds our
healing"; and each member of the Order wore a
gold ring, inscribed with
the words, "No man liveth unto himself."
The Grand Master of the
Order was Zinzendorf himself. He
wore a
golden cross; the cross had
an oval green front; and on that front
was painted a mustard tree,
with the words beneath, "Quod fuit ante
nihil," i.e., what was
formerly nothing.62
But already the boy had
wider conceptions still. As he sat
at
Franke's dinner table, he
listened one day to the conversation of
the Danish missionary,
Ziegenbalg, who was now home on furlough, and
he even saw some dusky
converts whom the missionary had brought from
Malabar {1715.}. His missionary zeal was aroused. As his guardian
had already settled that
Zinzendorf should enter the service of the
State, he had, of course,
no idea of becoming a missionary
himself;63 but, as that was
out of the question, he formed a solemn
league and covenant with
his young friend Watteville that when God
would show them suitable
men they would send them out to heathen
tribes for whom no one else
seemed to care. Nor was this
mere
playing at religion. As the Count looked back on his Halle
days he
saw in these early clubs
and covenants the germs of his later work;
and when he left for the
University the delighted Professor Franke
said, "This youth will some
day become a great light in the world."
As the Count, however, in
his uncle's opinion was growing rather too
Pietistic, he was now sent
to the University at Wittenberg, to study
the science of
jurisprudence, and prepare for high service in the
State {April, 1716.}. His father had been a Secretary of
State, and
the son was to follow in
his footsteps. His uncle had a
contempt
for Pietist religion; and
sent the lad to Wittenberg "to drive the
nonsense out of him." He had certainly chosen the right
place. For
two hundred years the great
University had been regarded as the
stronghold of the orthodox
Lutheran faith; the bi-centenary Luther
Jubilee was fast
approaching; the theological professors were models
of orthodox belief; and the
Count was enjoined to be regular at
church, and to listen with
due attention and reverence to the
sermons of those infallible
divines. It was like sending a boy
to
Oxford to cure him of a
taste for dissent. His tutor,
Crisenius,
went with him, to guard his
morals, read his letters, and rob him of
money at cards. He had also to master the useful arts of
riding,
fencing, and dancing. The cards gave him twinges of
conscience.
If
he took a hand, he laid
down the condition that any money he might
win should be given to the
poor. He prayed for skill in his
dancing
lessons, because he wanted
to have more time for more serious
studies. He was more devout in his daily life
than ever, prayed to
Christ with the foil in his
hand, studied the Bible in Hebrew and
Greek, spent whole nights
in prayer, fasted the livelong day on
Sundays, and was, in a
word, so Methodistic in his habits that he
could truly describe
himself as a "rigid Pietist." He
interfered in
many a duel, and rebuked
his fellow students for drinking hard; and
for this he was not
beloved. As he had come to
Wittenberg to study
law, he was not, of course,
allowed to attend the regular
theological lectures; but,
all the same, he spent his leisure in
studying the works of
Luther and Spener, and cultivated the personal
friendship of many of the
theological professors. And here he
made
a most delightful
discovery. As he came to know these
professors
better, he found that a man
could be orthodox without being
narrow-minded; and they,
for their part, also found that a man could
be a rigid Pietist without
being a sectarian prig. It was
time, he
thought, to put an end to
the quarrel. He would make peace
between
Wittenberg and Halle. He would reconcile the Lutherans
and
Pietists. He consulted with leading professors on
both sides; he
convinced them of the need
for peace; and the rival teachers
actually agreed to accept
this student of nineteen summers as the
agent of the longed-for
truce. But here Count Zinzendorf's
mother
intervened. "You must not
meddle," she wrote, "in such weighty
matters; they are above
your understanding and your powers."
And
Zinzendorf, being a dutiful
son, obeyed. "I think," he said, "a
visit to Halle might have
been of use, but, of course, I must obey
the fourth
commandment."64
And now, as befitted a
nobleman born, he was sent on the grand tour,
to give the final polish to
his education {1719.}. He regarded
the
prospect with horror. He had heard of more than one fine lord
whose
virtues had been polished
away. For him the dazzling sights
of
Utrecht and Paris had no
bewitching charm. He feared the
glitter,
the glamour, and the
glare. The one passion, love to
Christ, still
ruled his heart. "Ah!" he
wrote to a friend, "What a poor, miserable
thing is the grandeur of
the great ones of the earth! What
splendid
misery!" As John Milton, on his continental tour,
had sought the
company of musicians and
men of letters, so this young budding
Christian poet, with the
figure of the Divine Redeemer ever present
to his mind, sought out the
company of men and women who, whatever
their sect or creed,
maintained communion with the living Son of
God. He went first to
Frankfurt-on-the-Main, where Spener had toiled
so long, came down the
Rhine to Düsseldorf, spent half a year at
Utrecht, was introduced to
William, Prince of Orange, paid flying
calls at Brussels, Antwerp,
Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and ended the
tour by a six months' stay
amid the gaieties of Paris.
At
Düsseldorf a famous
incident occurred. There, in the
picture
gallery, he saw and admired
the beautiful Ecce Homo of Domenico
Feti; there, beneath the
picture he read the thrilling appeal: "All
this I did for thee; what
doest thou for Me?"; and there, in
response to that appeal, he
resolved anew to live for Him who had
worn the cruel crown of
thorns for all.65
At Paris he attended the
Court levée, and was presented to the Duke
of Orleans, the Regent, and
his mother, the Dowager Duchess.
"Sir Count," said the
Duchess, "have you been to the opera to-day?"
"Your Highness," he
replied, "I have no time for the opera."
He
would not spend a golden
moment except for the golden crown.
"I hear," said the Duchess,
"that you know the Bible by heart."
"Ah," said he, "I only wish
I did."
At Paris, too, he made the
acquaintance of the Catholic Archbishop,
Cardinal Noailles. It is marvellous how broad in his views
the
young man was. As he discussed the nature of true
religion with the
Cardinal, who tried in vain
to win him for the Church of Rome, he
came to the conclusion that
the true Church of Jesus Christ
consisted of many sects and
many forms of belief. He held that
the
Church was still an
invisible body; he held that it transcended the
bounds of all
denominations; he had found good Christians among
Protestants and Catholics
alike; and he believed, with all his heart
and soul, that God had
called him to the holy task of enlisting the
faithful in all the sects
in one grand Christian army, and thus
realizing, in visible form,
the promise of Christ that all His
disciples should be
one. He was no bigoted
Lutheran. For him
the
cloak of creed or sect was
only of minor moment. He desired
to
break down all sectarian
barriers. He desired to draw men
from all
the churches into one grand
fellowship with Christ. He saw,
and
lamented, the bigotry of
all the sects. "We Protestants," he said,
"are very fond of the word
liberty; but in practice we often try to
throttle the
conscience." He was asked if he
thought a Catholic
could be saved. "Yes," he
replied, "and the man who doubts that,
cannot have looked far
beyond his own small cottage."
"What, then," asked the
Duchess of Luynes, "is the real difference
between a Lutheran and a
Catholic?"
"It is," he replied, "the
false idea that the Bible is so hard to
understand that only the
Church can explain it." He had, in
a word,
discovered his
vocation.
His religion purified his
love. As he made his way home, at
the
close of the tour, he
called to see his aunt, the Countess of
Castell, and her daughter
Theodora {1720.}; and during his stay he
fell ill of a fever, and so
remained much longer than he had at
first intended. He helped the Countess to put in order
the affairs
of her estate, took a
leading part in the religious services of the
castle, and was soon
regarded as almost one of the family.
At
first, according to his
usual custom, he would talk about nothing
but religion. But gradually his manner changed. He opened out,
grew less reserved, and
would gossip and chat like a woman.
He
asked himself the reason of
this alteration. He discovered
it. He
was in love with his young
cousin, Theodora. For a while the
gentle
stream of love ran
smooth. His mother and the Countess
Castell
smiled approval; Theodora,
though rather icy in manner, presented
him with her portrait; and
the Count, who accepted the dainty gift
as a pledge of blossoming
love, was rejoicing at finding so sweet a
wife and so charming a
helper in his work, when an unforeseen event
turned the current of the
stream. Being belated one evening
on a
journey, he paid a visit to
his friend Count Reuss, and during
conversation made the
disquieting discovery that his friend wished
to marry Theodora. A beautiful contest followed. Each of the
claimants to the hand of
Theodora expressed his desire to retire in
favour of the other; and,
not being able to settle the dispute, the
two young men set out for
Castell to see what Theodora herself would
say. Young Zinzendorf's mode of reasoning was
certainly original.
If his own love for
Theodora was pure--i.e., if it was a pure
desire to do her good, and
not a vulgar sensual passion like that
with which many love-sick
swains were afflicted--he could, he said,
fulfil his purpose just as
well by handing her over to the care of
his Christian friend. "Even
if it cost me my life to surrender her,"
he said, "if it is more
acceptable to my Saviour, I ought to
sacrifice the dearest
object in the world." The two
friends arrived
at Castell and soon saw
which way the wind was blowing; and
Zinzendorf found, to his
great relief, that what had been a painful
struggle to him was as easy
as changing a dress to Theodora.
The
young lady gave Count Reuss
her heart and hand. The rejected
suitor
bore the blow like a
stoic. He would conquer, he said,
such
disturbing earthly
emotions; why should they be a thicket in the way
of his work for
Christ? The betrothal was sealed in
a religious
ceremony. Young Zinzendorf composed a cantata for
the occasion
{March 9th, 1721.}; the
cantata was sung, with orchestral
accompaniment, in the
presence of the whole house of Castell; and at
the conclusion of the
festive scene the young composer offered up on
behalf of the happy couple
a prayer so tender that all were moved to
tears. His self-denial was well rewarded. If the Count had
married
Theodora, he would only
have had a graceful drawing-room queen.
About eighteen months later
he married Count Reuss's sister,
Erdmuth Dorothea {Sept.
7th, 1722.}; and in her he found a friend so
true that the good folk at
Herrnhut called her a princess of God,
and the "foster-mother of
the Brethren's Church in the eighteenth
century."66
If the Count could now have
had his way he would have entered the
service of the State
Church; but in those days the clerical calling
was considered to be
beneath the dignity of a noble, and his
grandmother, pious though
she was, insisted that he should stick to
jurisprudence. He yielded, and took a post as King's
Councillor at
Dresden, at the Court of
Augustus the Strong, King of Saxony.
But
no man can fly from his
shadow, and Zinzendorf could not fly from
his hopes of becoming a
preacher of the Gospel. If he could
not
preach in the orthodox
pulpit, he would teach in some other way;
and, therefore, he invited
the public to a weekly meeting in his own
rooms on Sunday afternoons
from three to seven. He had no
desire to
found a sect, and no desire
to interfere with the regular work of
the Church. He was acting, he said, in strict
accordance with
ecclesiastical law; and he
justified his bold conduct by appealing
to a clause in Luther's
Smalkald Articles.67 He contended
that
there provision was made
for the kind of meeting that he was
conducting; and, therefore,
he invited men of all classes to meet
him on Sunday afternoons,
read a passage of Scripture together, and
talk in a free-and-easy
fashion on spiritual topics. He
became
known as rather a
curiosity; and Valentine Löscher, the popular
Lutheran preacher,
mentioned him by name in his sermons, and held
him up before the people as
an example they would all do well to
follow.
But Zinzendorf had not yet
reached his goal. He was not
content
with the work accomplished
by Spener, Franke, and other leading
Pietists. He was not content with drawing-room
meetings for people
of rank and money. If fellowship, said he, was good for
lords, it
must also be good for
peasants. He wished to apply the
ideas of
Spener to folk in humbler
life. For this purpose he now
bought from
his grandmother the little
estate of Berthelsdorf, which lay about
three miles from
Hennersdorf {April, 1722.}; installed his friend,
John Andrew Rothe, as
pastor of the village church; and resolved
that he and the pastor
together would endeavour to convert the
village into a pleasant
garden of God. "I bought this estate," he
said, "because I wanted to
spend my life among peasants, and win
their souls for
Christ."
"Go, Rothe," he said, "to
the vineyard of the Lord. You will find in
me a brother and helper
rather than a patron."
And here let us note
precisely the aim this pious Count had in view.
He was a loyal and devoted
member of the national Lutheran Church;
he was well versed in
Luther's theology and in Luther's practical
schemes; and now at
Berthelsdorf he was making an effort to carry
into practical effect the
fondest dreams of Luther himself.
For
this, the fellowship of
true believers, the great Reformer had
sighed in vain;68 and to
this great purpose the Count would now
devote his money and his
life.
He introduced the new
pastor to the people; the induction sermon was
preached by Schäfer, the
Pietist pastor at Görlitz; and the preacher
used the prophetic words,
"God will light a candle on these hills
which will illuminate the
whole land."
We have now to see how far
these words came true. We have now
to
see how the Lutheran Count
applied his ideas to the needs of exiles
from a foreign land, and
learned to take a vital interest in a
Church of which as yet he
had never heard.
CHAPTER
II.
CHRISTIAN DAVID,
1690-1722.
It is recorded in John
Wesley's "Journal,"69 that when he paid his
memorable visit to Herrnhut
he was much impressed by the powerful
sermons of a certain godly
carpenter, who had preached in his day to
the Eskimos in Greenland,
and who showed a remarkable knowledge of
divinity. It was Christian David, known to his
friends as the
"Servant of the
Lord."
He was born on December
31st, 1690, at Senftleben, in Moravia; he
was brought up in that old
home of the Brethren; and yet, as far as
records tell, he never
heard in his youthful days of the Brethren
who still held the fort in
the old home of their fathers. He
came
of a Roman Catholic family,
and was brought up in the Roman Catholic
faith. He sat at the feet of the parish priest,
was devout at Mass,
invoked his patron saint,
St. Anthony, knelt down in awe before
every image and picture of
the Virgin, regarded Protestants as
children of the devil, and
grew up to man's estate burning with
Romish zeal, as he says,
"like a baking oven." He began life
as a
shepherd; and his religion
was tender and deep. As he tended
his
sheep in the lonesome
fields, and rescued one from the jaws of a
wolf, he thought how
Christ, the Good Shepherd, had given His life
for men; and as he sought
his wandering sheep in the woods by night
he thought how Christ
sought sinners till he found them.
And yet
somehow he was not quite
easy in his mind. For all his zeal
and all
his piety he was not sure
that he himself had escaped the snare of
the fowler. He turned first for guidance to some
quiet Protestants,
and was told by them, to
his horror, that the Pope was Antichrist,
that the worship of saints
was a delusion, and that only through
faith in Christ could his
sins be forgiven. He was
puzzled. As
these Protestants were
ready to suffer for their faith, he felt they
must be sincere; and when
some of them were cast into prison, he
crept to the window of
their cell and heard them sing in the
gloaming. He read Lutheran books against the
Papists, and Papist
books against the
Lutherans. He was now dissatisfied
with both. He
could see, he said, that
the Papists were wrong, but that did not
prove that the Lutherans
were right; he could not understand what
the Lutherans meant when
they said that a man was justified by faith
alone; and at last he lost
his way so far in this famous theological
fog that he hated and
loathed the very name of Christ. He
turned
next for instruction to
some Jews; and the Jews, of course,
confirmed his doubts, threw
scorn upon the whole New Testament, and
endeavoured to convince him
that they alone were the true Israel of
God.
He turned next to the
Bible, and the fog lifted a little {1710.}.
He read the Old Testament
carefully through, to see if the
prophecies there had been
fulfilled; and, thereby, he arrived at the
firm belief that Jesus was
the promised Messiah. He then
mastered
the New Testament, and came
to the equally firm conclusion that the
Bible was the Word of
God.
And even yet he was not
content. As long as he stayed in
Catholic
Moravia he would have to
keep his new convictions a secret; and,
longing to renounce the
Church of Rome in public, he left Moravia,
passed through Hungary and
Silesia, and finally became a member of a
Lutheran congregation at
Berlin.
But the Lutherans seemed to
him very stiff and cold. He was
seeking
for a pearl of great price,
and so far he had failed to find it.
He
had failed to find it in
the Church of Rome, failed to find it in
the Scriptures, and failed
to find it in the orthodox Protestants of
Berlin. He had hoped to find himself in a goodly
land, where men
were godly and true; and he
found that even the orthodox Protestants
made mock of his pious
endeavours. He left Berlin in
disgust, and
enlisted in the Prussian
Army. He did not find much piety there.
He
served in the war against
Charles XII. of Sweden {1715.}, was
present at the siege of
Stralsund, thought soldiers no better than
civilians, accepted his
discharge with joy, and wandered around from
town to town, like the old
philosopher seeking an honest man.
At
last, however, he made his
way to the town of Görlitz, in Silesia
{1717.}; and there he came
into personal contact with two Pietist
clergymen, Schäfer and
Schwedler. For the first time in
his weary
pilgrimage he met a pastor
who was also a man. He fell ill of
a
dangerous disease; he could
not stir hand or foot for twenty weeks;
he was visited by Schwedler
every day; and thus, through the gateway
of human sympathy, he
entered the kingdom of peace, and felt assured
that all his sins were
forgiven. He married a member of
Schwedler's
Church, was admitted to the
Church himself, and thus found, in
Pietist circles, that very
spirit of fellowship and help which
Zinzendorf himself regarded
as the greatest need of the Church.
But now Christian David
must show to others the treasure he had
found for himself. For the next five years he made his home
at
Görlitz; but, every now and
then, at the risk of his life, he would
take a trip to Moravia, and
there tell his old Protestant friends
the story of his new-found
joy. He preached in a homely style;
he
had a great command of
Scriptural language; he was addressing men
who for many years had
conned their Bibles in secret; and thus his
preaching was like unto oil
on a smouldering fire, and stirred to
vigorous life once more
what had slumbered for a hundred years since
the fatal Day of
Blood. He tramped the valleys of
Moravia; he was
known as the Bush Preacher,
and was talked of in every market-place;
the shepherds sang old
Brethren's hymns on the mountains; a new
spirit breathed upon the
old dead bones; and thus, through the
message of this simple man,
there began in Moravia a hot revival of
Protestant zeal and
hope. It was soon to lead to
marvellous
results.
For the last three hundred
and forty years there had been
established in the
neighbourhood of Fulneck, in Moravia, a colony of
Germans.70 They still spoke the German language;
they lived in
places bearing German names
and bore German names themselves; they
had used a German version
of the Bible and a German edition of the
Brethren's Hymns; and thus,
when David's trumpet sounded, they were
able to quit their
long-loved homes and settle down in comfort on
German soil. At Kunewalde71 dwelt the Schneiders and
Nitschmanns;
at Zauchtenthal the Stachs
and Zeisbergers; at Sehlen the Jaeschkes
and Neissers; and at
Senftleben, David's old home, the Grassmanns.
For such men there was now
no peace in their ancient home.
Some
were imprisoned; some were
loaded with chains; some were yoked to
the plough and made to work
like horses; and some had to stand in
wells of water until nearly
frozen to death. And yet the star
of
hope still shone upon
them. As the grand old patriarch,
George
Jaeschke, saw the angel of
death draw near, he gathered his son and
grandsons round his bed,
and spoke in thrilling, prophetic words of
the remnant that should yet
be saved.
"It is true," said he,
"that our liberties are gone, and that our
descendants are giving way
to a worldly spirit, so that the Papacy
is devouring them. It may seem as though the final end of
the
Brethren's Church had
come. But, my beloved children, you
will see
a great deliverance. The remnant will be saved. How, I cannot say;
but something tells me that
an exodus will take place; and that a
refuge will be offered in a
country and on a spot where you will be
able, without fear, to
serve the Lord according to His holy Word."
The time of deliverance had
come. As Christian David heard of
the
sufferings which these men
had now to endure, his blood boiled with
anger. He resolved to go to their rescue. The path lay open. He
had made many friends in
Saxony. His friend Schäfer
introduced him
to Rothe; Rothe introduced
him to Zinzendorf; and Christian David
asked the Count for
permission to bring some persecuted Protestants
from Moravia to find a
refuge in Berthelsdorf. The
conversation was
momentous. The heart of the Count was touched. If these men, said
he, were genuine martyrs,
he would do his best to help them; and he
promised David that if they
came he would find them a place of
abode. The joyful carpenter returned to
Moravia, and told the news
to the Neisser family at
Sehlen. "This," said they, "is God's doing;
this is a call from the
Lord."
And so, at ten o'clock one
night, there met at the house of Jacob
Neisser, in Sehlen, a small
band of emigrants {May 27th, 1722.}.
At
the head of the band was
Christian David; and the rest of the little
group consisted of Augustin
and Jacob Neisser, their wives and
children, Martha Neisser,
and Michael Jaeschke, a cousin of the
family.72 We know but little about these humble
folk; and we cannot
be sure that they were all
descendants of the old Church of the
Brethren. Across the mountains they came, by
winding and unknown
paths. For the sake of their faith they left
their goods and
chattels behind; long and
weary was the march; and at length, worn
out and footsore, they
arrived, with Christian David at their head,
at Zinzendorf's estate at
Berthelsdorf {June 8th, 1722.}.
The streams had met: the
new river was formed; and thus the course
of Renewed Brethren's
History had begun.
CHAPTER
III.
THE FOUNDING OF HERRNHUT,
1722-1727.
As these wanderers from a
foreign land had not been able to bring in
their pockets certificates
of orthodoxy, and might, after all, be
dangerous heretics, it
occurred to Zinzendorf's canny steward,
Heitz, that on the whole it
would be more fitting if they settled,
not in the village itself,
but at a safe and convenient distance.
The Count was away; the
steward was in charge; and the orthodox
parish must not be exposed
to infection. As the Neissers,
further,
were cutlers by trade,
there was no need for them in the quiet
village. If they wished to earn an honest living
they could do it
better upon the broad high
road.
For these reasons,
therefore, he led the exiles to a dismal, swampy
stretch of ground about a
mile from the village; and told them for
the present to rest their
bones in an old unfinished farmhouse {June
8th, 1722.}. The spot itself was dreary and bleak,
but the
neighbouring woods of pines
and beeches relieved the bareness of the
scene. It was part of Zinzendorf's estate, and
lay at the top of a
gentle slope, up which a
long avenue now leads. It was a
piece of
common pasture ground, and
was therefore known as the Hutberg,73 or
Watch-Hill. It was on the
high road from Löbau to Zittau; it was
often used as a camping
ground by gypsies and other pedlars; and the
road was in such a
disgusting state that wagons sometimes sank axle
deep in the mud. For the moment the refugees were sick at
heart.
"Where," said Mrs. Augustin
Neisser, "shall we find bread in this
wilderness?"
"If you believe," said
Godfrey Marche, tutor to Lady Gersdorf's
granddaughters, "you shall
see the glory of God."
The steward was quite
concerned for the refugees. As he
strolled
around inspecting the land
he noticed one particular spot where a
thick mist was rising; and
concluding that there a spring was sure
to be found, he offered a
prayer on their behalf, and registered the
solemn vow, "Upon this
spot, in Thy name, I will build for them the
first house." He laid their needs before Lady
Gersdorf, and the
good old poetess kindly
sent them a cow; he inspected the site with
Christian David, and marked
the trees he might fell; and thus
encouraged, Christian David
seized his axe, struck it into a tree,
and, as he did so,
exclaimed, "Yea, the sparrow hath found a house,
and the swallow a nest for
herself."74 {June 17th, 1722.}
The first step in the
building of Herrnhut had been taken.
For some
weeks the settlers had
still to eat the bread of bitterness and
scorn. It was long before they could find a
spring of water.
The
food was poor, the children
fell ill; the folk in the neighbourhood
laughed; and even when the
first house was built they remarked that
it would not be standing
long.
But already Christian David
had wider plans. Already in
vivid
imagination he saw a goodly
city rise, mapped out the courts and
streets in his mind, and
explained his glowing schemes to the
friendly Heitz. The steward himself was carried away
with zeal.
The very name of the hill
was hailed as a promising omen. "May God
grant," wrote Heitz to the
Count, "that your excellency may be able
to build on the hill called
the Hutberg a town which may not only
itself abide under the
Lord's Watch (Herrnhut), but all the
inhabitants of which may
also continue on the Lord's Watch, so that
no silence may be there by
day or night." It was thus that
Herrnhut
received the name which was
soon to be famous in the land; and thus
that the exiles, cheered
anew, resolved to build a glorious City of
God.
"We fear," they wrote to
the Count himself, "that our settling here
may be a burden to you; and
therefore we most humbly entreat you to
grant us your protection,
to continue to help us further still, and
to show kindness and love
to us poor distressed and simple-minded
petitioners."
As the building of the
first house proceeded the pious Heitz grew
more and more excited. He drove in the first nail; he helped to
fix
the first pillar; and,
finally, when the house was ready, he opened
it in solemn religious
style, and preached a sort of prophetic
sermon about the holy city,
the new Jerusalem coming down from God
out of heaven. The Count himself soon blessed the
undertaking.
As
he drove along, one winter
night, on the road from Strahwalde to
Hennersdorf, he saw a
strange light shining through the trees {Dec.
2nd.}. He asked what the light could mean. There, he was told,
the
Moravian refugees had built
the first house on his estate.
He
stopped the carriage,
entered the house, assured the inmates of his
hearty goodwill, fell down
on his knees, and commended the
enterprise to the care of
God.
Again the restless David
was on the move. As he knelt one
day to
fix a plank in the new
manor-house which Zinzendorf was building in
the village, it suddenly
flashed on his busy brain that he ought to
do something out of the
common to show his gratitude to God {1723.}.
His wife had just passed
through a dangerous illness; he had vowed
to God that if she
recovered he would go to Moravia again; and,
throwing down his tools on
the spot, he darted off in his working
clothes, and without a hat
on his head, and made his way once more
to Sehlen, the old home of
the Neissers. He brought a letter
from
the Neissers in his pocket;
he urged the rest of the family to cross
the border; and the result
was that before many days were gone a
band of eighteen more
emigrants were on their way to Herrnhut.
His next step had still
more momentous results. As he made
his way
from town to town, and
urged his friends to come to "David's City,"
he had no further aim than
to find a home where Protestants could
live in peace and
comfort. He knew but little, if
anything at all,
of the old Church of the
Brethren; he had never been a member of
that Church himself; he had
no special interest in her welfare; and
the emigrants whom he had
brought to Herrnhut were mostly
evangelical folk who had
been awakened by the preaching of the
Pietist pastor, Steinmetz,
of Teschen. But now, in the village
of
Zauchtenthal, he found a
band of five young men whose bosoms glowed
with zeal for the ancient
Church. They were David Nitschmann
I.,
the Martyr; David
Nitschmann II., the first Bishop of the Renewed
Church; David Nitschmann
III., the Syndic; Melchior Zeisberger, the
father of the apostle to
the Indians; and John Toeltschig, one of
the first Moravian
preachers in Yorkshire. They were
genuine sons
of the Brethren; they used
the Catechism of Comenius; they sang the
Brethren's hymns in their
homes; and now they were looking wistfully
forward to the time when
the Church would renew her strength like
the eagle's. For some months they had made their
native village the
centre of an evangelical
revival. At last events in the
village
came to a crisis; the young
men were summoned before the village
judge; and the judge, no
other than Toeltschig's father, commanded
them to close their
meetings, and to take their share, like decent
fellows, in the drunken
jollifications at the public-house.
For the
brave "Five Churchmen"
there was now no way but one.
Forthwith they
resolved to quit Moravia,
and seek for other Brethren at Lissa, in
Poland {May 2nd, 1724.};
and the very next night they set out on
their journey, singing the
Moravian Emigrants' song:--
Blessed be the day when I must
roam,
Far from my country, friends and
home,
An exile poor and
mean;
My father's God will be my
guide,
Will angel guards for me
provide,
My soul in dangers
screen.
Himself will lead me to a
spot
Where, all my cares and griefs
forgot,
I shall enjoy sweet
rest.
As pants for cooling streams the
hart,
I languish for my heavenly
part,
For God, my refuge
blest.
For them the chosen haven
of rest was Lissa. There the
great
Comenius had taught; and
there, they imagined, Brethren lingered
still. As they had, however, heard a good deal
from David of the
"town" being built at
Herrnhut, they resolved to pay a passing call
on their way. At Lower Wiese they called on Pastor
Schwedler. He
renewed their zeal for the
Church in glowing terms.
"My children," he said, "do
you know whose descendants you are?
It
is a hundred years since
the persecutions began against your
fathers. You are now to enjoy among us that
liberty of conscience
for the sake of which they
shed their blood. We shall see
you
blossom and flourish in our
midst."
It was a memorable day when
they arrived at Herrnhut {May 12th,
1724.}. The first sight of the holy city did not
impress them.
The
excited David had painted a
rosy picture. They expected to find
a
flourishing town, and all
they saw was three small houses, of which
only one was
finished.
"If three houses make a
city," said David Nitschmann, "there are
worse places than
Herrnhut."
And yet there was something
to look at after all. At a
little
distance from the three
small houses, sat Friedrich de Watteville on
a log of wood; Christian
David was working away at another building;
in the afternoon the Count
and Countess appeared; and the Count then
laid the foundation stone
of a college for noblemen's sons.
They
stayed to see the
ceremony. They heard the Count
deliver an
impressive speech. They heard de Watteville offer a
touching
prayer. They saw him place his jewels under the
stone. They
were
touched; they stayed; and
became the firmest pillars of the rising
temple.
And now the stream from
Moravia increased in force and volume.
Again and again, ten times
in all, did the roving David journey to
the Moravian dales; and
again and again did the loud blast of the
trombones in the square
announce that yet another band of refugees
had arrived. Full many a stirring and thrilling tale
had the
refugees to tell; how
another David Nitschmann, imprisoned in a
castle, found a rope at his
window and escaped; how David Schneider
and another David
Nitschmann found their prison doors open; how
David Hickel, who had been
nearly starved in a dungeon, walked out
between his guards in broad
daylight, when their backs were turned;
how Andrew Beier and David
Fritsch had stumbled against their prison
door and found that the
bolt was loose; how Hans Nitschmann,
concealed in a ditch, heard
his pursuers, a foot off, say, "This is
the place, here he must
be," and yet was not discovered after all.
No wonder these wanderers
felt that angels had screened them on
their way. For the sake of their faith they had
been imprisoned,
beaten, thrust into filthy
dungeons. For the sake of their
faith
they had left behind their
goods, their friends, their worldly
prospects, had tramped the
unknown mountain paths, had slept under
hedges, had been attacked
by robbers. And now, for the sake
of this
same faith, these men,
though sons of well-to-do people, settled
down to lives of manual
toil in Herrnhut. And the numbers
swelled;
the houses rose; and
Herrnhut assumed the shape of a hollow square.
At this point, however, a
difficulty arose. As the rumour
spread in
the surrounding country
that the Count had offered his estate as an
asylum for persecuted
Protestants all sorts of religious malcontents
came to make Herrnhut their
home. Some had a touch of
Calvinism,
and were fond of discussing
free will and predestination; some were
disciples of the sixteenth
century Anabaptist mystic, Casper
Schwenkfeld; some were
vague evangelicals from Swabia; some were
Lutheran Pietists from near
at hand; and some, such as the "Five
Churchmen," were
descendants of the Brethren's Church, and wished to
see her revived on German
soil. The result was dissension in
the
camp. As the settlement grew larger things
grew worse. As
the
settlers learned to know
each other better they learned to love each
other less. As poverty crept in at the door love
flew out of the
window. Instead of trying to help each other,
men actually tried to
cut each other out in
business, just like the rest of the world.
As
the first flush of joy died
away, men pointed out each other's
motes, and sarcasm pushed
charity from her throne; and, worse than
all, there now appeared
that demon of discord, theological dispute.
The chief leader was a
religious crank, named Krüger. He
was, of
course, no descendant of
the Brethren's Church. He had
quarrelled
with a Lutheran minister at
Ebersdorf, had been promptly excluded
from the Holy Communion,
and now came whimpering to Herrnhut, and
lifted up his voice against
the Lutheran Church. he did not possess
the garment of
righteousness, he decked himself out with sham
excitement and rhetoric;
and, as these are cheap ribbons and make a
fine show, he soon gained a
reputation as a saint. He
announced
that he had been
commissioned by God with the special task of
reforming Count Zinzendorf;
described Rothe as the "False Prophet"
and Zinzendorf as "The
Beast"; denounced the whole Lutheran Church
as a Babylon, and summoned
all in Herrnhut to leave it; and
altogether made such a show
of piety and holy devotion to God that
his freaks and crotchets
and fancies and vagaries were welcomed by
the best of men, and
poisoned the purest blood. His
success was
marvellous. As the simple settlers listened to his
rapt orations
they became convinced that
the Lutheran Church was no better than a
den of thieves; and the
greater number now refused to attend the
Parish Church, and prepared
to form a new sect. Christian
David
himself was led away. He walked about like a shadow; he was
sure
that Krüger had a special
Divine revelation; he dug a private well
for himself, and built
himself a new house a few yards from the
settlement, so that he
might not be smirched by the pitch of
Lutheran Christianity. Worse and ever worse waxed the
confusion.
More "horrible"75 became
the new notions. The eloquent
Krüger went
out of his mind; and was
removed to the lunatic asylum at Berlin.
But the evil that he had
done lived after him. The whole
city on
the hill was now a nest of
fanatics. It was time for the
Count
himself to
interfere.
For the last five years,
while Herrnhut was growing, the Count had
almost ignored the
refugees; and had quietly devoted his leisure
time to his darling scheme
of establishing a village "Church within
the Church" at
Berthelsdorf. He had still his
official State duties
to perform. He was still a King's Councillor at
Dresden. He
spent
the winter months in the
city and the summer at his country-seat;
and as long as the settlers
behaved themselves as loyal sons of the
Lutheran Church he saw no
reason to meddle in their affairs.
He
had, moreover, taken two
wise precautions. He had first
issued a
public notice that no
refugee should settle at Herrnhut unless
compelled by persecution;
and secondly, he had called a meeting of
the refugees themselves,
and persuaded them to promise that in all
their gatherings they would
remain loyal to the Augsburg Confession.
Meanwhile, in the village
itself, he had pushed his scheme with
vigour. He named his house Bethel; his estate
was his parish; and
his tenants were his
congregation. He had never
forgotten his
boyish vow to do all in his
power to extend the Kingdom of Christ;
and now he formed another
society like the old Order of the Mustard
Seed. It was called the
"League of the Four Brethren"; it consisted
of Zinzendorf, Friedrich de
Watteville, and Pastors Rothe and
Schäfer; and its object was
to proclaim to the world, by means of a
league of men devoted to
Christ, "that mystery and charm of the
Incarnation which was not
yet sufficiently recognized in the
Church." He had several methods of work. As he wished to reach
the
young folk of noble rank,
he had a school for noblemen's sons built
on the Hutberg, and a
school for noblemen's daughters down in the
village; and the members of
the League all signed an agreement to
subscribe the needful funds
for the undertaking. As he
wished,
further, to appeal to men
in various parts of the country, he
established a
printing-office at Ebersdorf, and from that office
sent books, pamphlets,
letters, and cheap editions of the Bible in
all directions. As he longed, thirdly, for personal
contact with
leading men in the Church,
he instituted a system of journeys to
Halle and other centres of
learning and piety. But his best
work
was done in
Berthelsdorf. His steward, Heitz,
gave the rustics
Bible lessons; Pastor Rothe
preached awakening sermons in the parish
church, and his preaching
was, as the Count declared, "as though it
rained flames from heaven";
and he himself, in the summer season,
held daily singing meetings
and prayer meetings in his own house.
Hand in hand did he and
Rothe work hard for the flock at
Berthelsdorf. On a Sunday morning the pastor would
preach a telling
sermon in a crowded church;
in the afternoon the squire would gather
his tenants in his house
and expound to them the morning's
discourse. The whole village was stirred; the
Church was enlarged;
and the Count himself was
so in earnest that if the slightest hitch
occurred in a service he
would burst into tears. While
things in
Herrnhut were growing worse
things in Berthelsdorf were growing
better; while stormy winds
blew on the hill there was peace and
fellowship down in the
valley. How closely the Count and
the pastor
were linked may be seen
from the following fact. The
Count's family
pew in the Church was a
small gallery or raised box over the vestry;
the box had a trap-door in
the floor; the pastor, according to
Lutheran custom, retired to
the vestry at certain points in the
service; and the Count, by
opening the aforesaid door, could
communicate his wishes to
the pastor.
He had now to apply his
principles to Herrnhut. As long as
the
settlers had behaved
themselves well, and kept their promise to be
loyal to the National
Church, he had left them alone to follow their
own devices; and even if
they sang old Brethren's hymns at their
meetings, he had no
insuperable objection. But now the
time had
come to take stern
measures. He had taken them in out
of charity;
he had invited them to the
meetings in his house; and now they had
turned the place into a
nest of scheming dissenters. There
was war
in the camp. On the one hand, Christian David called
Rothe a
narrow-minded
churchman. On the other hand, Rothe
thundered from
his pulpit against the "mad
fanatics" on the hill. As Jew
and
Samaritan in days of old,
so now were Berthelsdorf and Herrnhut.
At this critical point the
Count intervened, and changed the duel
into a duet {1727.}. He would have no makers of sects on
his
estate. With all their faults, he believed that
the settlers were
at bottom broad-minded
people. Only clear away the rubbish
and the
gold would be found
underneath.
"Although our dear
Christian David," he said, "was calling me the
Beast and Mr. Rothe the
False Prophet, we could see his honest heart
nevertheless, and knew we
could lead him right. It is not a
bad
maxim," he added, "when
honest men are going wrong to put them into
office, and they will learn
from experience what they will never
learn from
speculation."
He acted on that maxim
now. He would teach the exiles to
obey the
law of the land, to bow to
his authority as lord of the manor, and
to live in Christian
fellowship with each other. For
this purpose,
he summoned them all to a
mass meeting in the Great House on the
Hutberg {May 12th.},
lectured them for over three hours on the sin
of schism, read out the
"Manorial Injunctions and Prohibitions,"76
which all inhabitants of
Herrnhut must promise to obey, and then
submitted a number of
"Statutes" as the basis of a voluntary
religious society. The effect was sudden and swift. At one bound
the settlers changed from a
group of quarrelling schismatics to an
organized body of orderly
Christian tenants; and forthwith the
assembled settlers shook
hands, and promised to obey the Injunctions
and
Prohibitions.
As soon as the Count had
secured good law and order he obtained
leave of absence from
Dresden, took up his residence at Herrnhut,
and proceeded to organize
all who wished into a systematic Church
within the Church. For this purpose he prepared another
agreement
{July 4th.}, entitled the
"Brotherly Union and Compact," signed the
agreement first himself,
persuaded Christian David, Pastor Schäfer
and another neighbouring
clergyman to do the same, and then invited
all the rest to follow
suit. Again, the goodwill was
practically
universal. As the settlers had promised on May 12th
to obey the
Manorial Injunctions and
Prohibitions, so now, of their own free
will, they signed a promise
to end their sectarian quarrels, to obey
the "Statutes," and to live
in fellowship with Christians of all
beliefs and
denominations. Thus had the Count
accomplished a double
purpose. As lord of the manor he had crushed the
design to form a
separate sect; and as
Spener's disciple he had persuaded the
descendants of the Bohemian
Brethren to form another "Church within
the
Church."
Nor was this all. As the Brethren looked back in later
years to
those memorable days in
Herrnhut, they came to regard the summer
months of 1727 as a holy,
calm, sabbatic season, when one and all
were quickened and stirred
by the power of the Spirit Divine. "The
whole place," said
Zinzendorf himself, "represented a visible
tabernacle of God among
men." For the next four months the
city on
the hill was the home of
ineffable joy; and the very men who had
lately quarrelled with each
other now formed little groups for
prayer and praise. As the evening shadows lengthened across
the
square the whole settlement
met to pray and praise, and talk with
each other, like brothers
and sisters of one home. The
fancies and
vagaries fled. The Count held meetings every day. The Church at
Berthelsdorf was crowded
out. The good David, now appointed
Chief
Elder, persuaded all to
study the art of love Divine by going
through the First Epistle
of St. John. The very children were
stirred and awakened. The whole movement was calm, strong,
deep and
abiding. Of vulgar excitement there was none; no
noisy meetings, no
extravagant babble, no
religious tricks to work on the emotions.
For mawkish, sentimental
religion the Count had an honest contempt.
"It is," he said, "as easy
to create religious excitement as it is
to stir up the sensual
passions; and the former often leads to the
latter." As the Brethren met in each other's
homes, or on the
Hutberg when the stars were
shining, they listened, with reverence
and holy awe, to the still
voice of that Good Shepherd who was
leading them gently, step
by step, to the green pastures of peace.
Amid the fervour the Count
made an announcement which caused every
cheek to flush with new
delight. He had made a strange
discovery.
At Zittau, not far away,
was a reference library; and there, one
day, he found a copy of
Comenius's Latin version of the old
Brethren's "Account of
Discipline." {July.} His eyes were opened at
last. For the first time in his busy life he
read authentic
information about the old
Church of the Brethren; and discovered, to
his amazement and joy, that
so far from being disturbers of the
peace, with a Unitarian
taint in their blood, they were pure
upholders of the very faith
so dear to his own heart.
His soul was stirred to its
depths. "I could not," he said, "read
the lamentations of old
Comenius, addressed to the Church of
England, lamentations
called forth by the idea that the Church of
the Brethren had come to an
end, and that he was locking its door--I
could not read his mournful
prayer, 'Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord,
and we shall be turned;
renew our days as of old,' without resolving
there and then: I, as far
as I can, will help to bring about this
renewal. And though I have to sacrifice my
earthly possessions, my
honours and my life, as
long as I live I will do my utmost to see to
it that this little flock
of the Lord shall be preserved for Him
until He
come."
And even this was not the
strangest part of the story. As the
Count
devoured the ancient
treatise, he noticed that the rules laid down
therein were almost the
same as the rules which he had just drawn up
for the refugees at
Herrnhut. He returned to Herrnhut,
reported his
find, and read the good
people extracts from the book {Aug. 4th.}.
The sensation was
profound. If this was like new milk
to the Count
it was like old wine to the
Brethren; and again the fire of their
fathers burned in their
veins.
And now the coping stone
was set on the temple {Aug. 13th.}.
As the
Brethren were learning,
step by step, to love each other in true
sincerity, Pastor Rothe now
invited them all to set the seal to the
work by coming in a body to
Berthelsdorf Church, and there joining,
with one accord, in the
celebration of the Holy Communion.
The
Brethren accepted the
invitation with joy. The date fixed
was
Monday, August 13th. The sense of awe was overpowering. As the
Brethren walked down the
slope to the church all felt that the
supreme occasion had
arrived; and all who had quarrelled in the days
gone by made a covenant of
loyalty and love. At the door of
the
church the strange sense of
awe was thrilling. They entered
the
building; the service
began; the "Confession" was offered by the
Count; and then, at one and
the same moment, all present, rapt in
deep devotion, were stirred
by the mystic wondrous touch of a power
which none could define or
understand. There, in
Berthelsdorf
Parish Church, they
attained at last the firm conviction that they
were one in Christ; and
there, above all, they believed and felt
that on them, as on the
twelve disciples on the Day of Pentecost,
had rested the purifying
fire of the Holy Ghost.
"We learned," said the
Brethren, "to love." "From that time onward,"
said David Nitschmann,
"Herrnhut was a living Church of Jesus
Christ. We thank the Lord that we ever came to
Herrnhut, instead of
pressing on, as we
intended, to Poland."
And there the humble
Brother spoke the truth. As the
Brethren
returned that evening to
Herrnhut, they felt within them a strength
and joy they had never
known before. They had realised
their
calling in Christ. They had won the Divine gift of
Christian union.
They had won that spirit of
brotherly love which only the great
Good Spirit could
give. They had won that sense of
fellowship with
Christ, and fellowship with
one another, which had been the
costliest gem in the days
of their fathers; and therefore, in
future, they honoured the
day as the true spiritual birthday of the
Renewed Church of the
Brethren. It is useless trying to
express
their feelings in
prose. Let us listen to the moving
words of the
Moravian poet, James
Montgomery:--
They walked with God in peace and
love,
But failed with one
another;
While sternly for the faith they
strove,
Brother fell out with
brother;
But He in Whom they put their
trust,
Who knew their frames, that they
were dust,
Pitied and healed
their weakness.
He found them in His house of
prayer,
With one accord
assembled,
And so revealed His presence
there,
They wept for joy and
trembled;
One cup they drank, one bread they
brake,
One baptism shared, one language
spake,
Forgiving and
forgiven.
Then forth they went, with tongues
of flame,
In one blest theme
delighting,
The love of Jesus and His
Name,
God's children all
uniting!
That love, our theme and watchword
still;
That law of love may we
fulfil,
And love as we are
loved.
The next step was to see
that the blessing was not lost {Aug.
27th.}. For this purpose the Brethren, a few
days later, arranged a
system of Hourly
Intercession. As the fire on the
altar in the
Jewish Temple was never
allowed to go out, so the Brethren resolved
that in this new temple of
the Lord the incense of intercessory
prayer should rise
continually day and night.
Henceforth, Herrnhut
in very truth should be the
"Watch of the Lord." The whole day was
carefully mapped out, and
each Brother or Sister took his or her
turn. Of all the prayer unions ever organized
surely this was one
of the most
remarkable. It is said to have
lasted without
interruption for over a
hundred years.
CHAPTER
IV.
LIFE AT
HERRNHUT.
As we study the social and
religious system which now developed at
Herrnhut, it is well to
bear in mind the fact that when the Count,
as lord of the manor, first
issued his "Injunctions and
Prohibitions," he was not
aware that, in so doing, he was calling
back to life once more the
discipline of the old Bohemian Brethren.
He had not yet read the
history of the Brethren, and he had not yet
studied Comenius's "Account
of Discipline." He knew but little
of
the Brethren's past, and
the little that he knew was wrong; and,
having no other plan to
guide him, he took as his model the
constitution lying ready to
hand in the average German village of
the day, and adapted that
simple constitution to the special needs
of the exiles.77 He had no desire to make Herrnhut
independent.
It
was still to be a part of
his estate, and conform to the laws of the
land; and still to be the
home of a "Church within the Church," as
planned by Luther long ago
in his famous German Mass.
First, then the Count laid
down the rule that all male adults in
Herrnhut, no matter to what
sect they might belong, should have a
voice in the election of
twelve Elders; and henceforward these
twelve Elders, like those
in the neighbouring estates of Silesia,
had control over every
department of life, and enforced the
Injunctions and
Prohibitions with an iron hand.
They levied the
usual rates and taxes to
keep the streets and wells in order.
They
undertook the care of
widows and orphans. They watched
the
relations of single young
men and women. They kept a sharp
eye on
the doings at the inn. They called to order the tellers of
evil
tales; and they banished
from Herrnhut all who disobeyed the laws,
or conducted themselves in
an unbecoming, frivolous or offensive
manner.
The power of the Elders was
enormous. If a new refugee desired
to
settle in Herrnhut, he must
first obtain permission from the Elders.
If a settler desired to go
on a journey, he must first obtain
permission from the
Elders. If a man desired to build a
house; if a
trader desired to change
his calling; if an apprentice desired to
leave his master; if a
visitor desired to stay the night, he must
first obtain permission
from the Elders. If a man fell in
love and
desired to marry, he must
first obtain the approval of the Elders;
and until that approval had
been obtained, he was not allowed to
propose to the choice of
his heart. Let us see the reason
for this
remarkable
strictness.
As the Brethren settled
down in Herrnhut, they endeavoured, under
the Count's direction, to
realize the dignity of labour. For
rich
and poor, for Catholic and
Protestant, for all able-bodied men and
women, the same stern rule
held good. If a man desired to
settle at
Herrnhut, the one supreme
condition was that he earned his bread by
honest toil, and lived a
godly, righteous and sober life.
For
industrious Catholics there
was a hearty welcome; for vagabonds,
tramps and whining beggars
there was not a bed to spare. If a
man
would work he might stay,
and worship God according to his
conscience; but if he was
lazy, he was ordered off the premises.
As
the Brethren met on Sunday
morning for early worship in the public
hall, they joined with one
accord in the prayer, "Bless the sweat of
the brow and faithfulness
in business"; and the only business they
allowed was business which
they could ask the Lord to bless.
To
them work was a sacred
duty, a delight and a means for the common
good. If a man is blessed who has found his
work, then blessed were
the folk at Herrnhut. "We
do not work to live," said the Count; "we
live to work." The whole aim was the good of each and
the good of
all. As the grocer stood behind his counter,
or the weaver plied
his flying shuttle, he was
toiling, not for himself alone, but for
all his Brethren and
Sisters. If a man desired to set up
in
business, he had first to
obtain the permission of the Elders; and
the Elders refused to grant
the permission unless they thought that
the business in question
was needed by the rest of the people. "No
brother," ran the law at
Herrnhut, "shall compete with his brother
in trade." No man was allowed to lend money on
interest without the
consent of the Elders. If two men had any dispute in business,
they
must come to terms within a
week; and if they did not, or went to
law, they were
expelled. If a man could buy an
article in Herrnhut,
he was not allowed to buy
it anywhere else.
It is easy to see the
purpose of these regulations. They
were an
attempt to solve the social
problem, to banish competition, and to
put co-operation in its
place. For some years the scheme
was
crowned with glorious
success. The settlement grew; the
trade
flourished; the great firm
of Dürninger obtained a world-wide
reputation; the women were
skilled in weaving and spinning; and the
whole system worked so well
that in 1747 the Saxon Government
besought the Count to
establish a similar settlement at Barby.
At
Herrnhut, in a word, if
nowhere else, the social problem was solved.
There, at least, the aged
and ill could live in peace and comfort;
there grim poverty was
unknown; there the widow and orphan were free
from carking care; and
there men and women of humble rank had
learned the truth that when
men toil for the common good there is a
perennial nobleness in
work.78
For pleasure the Brethren
had neither time nor taste. They
worked,
on the average, sixteen
hours a day, allowed only five hours for
sleep, and spent the
remaining three at meals and meetings.
The
Count was as Puritanic as
Oliver Cromwell himself. For some
reason
he had come to the
conclusion that the less the settlers knew of
pleasure the better, and
therefore he laid down the law that all
strolling popular
entertainers should be forbidden to enter the holy
city. No public buffoon ever cracked his jokes
at Herrnhut.
No
tight-rope dancer poised on
giddy height. No barrel-dancer
rolled
his empty barrel. No tout for lotteries swindled the
simple. No
juggler mystified the
children. No cheap-jack cheated the
innocent
maidens. No quack-doctor sold his nasty
pills. No melancholy
bear
made his feeble attempt to
dance. For the social joys of
private
life the laws were stricter
still. At Herrnhut, ran
one
comprehensive clause, there
were to be no dances whatever, no
wedding breakfasts, no
christening bumpers, no drinking parties, no
funeral feasts, and no
games like those played in the surrounding
villages. No bride at Herrnhut ever carried a
bouquet. No
sponsor
ever gave the new arrival a
mug or a silver spoon.
For sins of the coarse and
vulgar kind there was no mercy. If
a man
got drunk, or cursed, or
stole, or used his fists, or committed
adultery or fornication, he
was expelled, and not permitted to
return till he had given
infallible proofs of true repentance.
No
guilty couple were allowed
to "cheat the parson." No man
was
allowed to strike his wife,
and no wife was allowed to henpeck her
husband; and any woman
found guilty of the latter crime was summoned
before the board of Elders
and reprimanded in public.
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.
Meanwhile the movement at
Herrnhut was growing fast. The
great
point was to guard against
religious poison. As the Count had
a
healthy horror of works of
darkness, he insisted that no meetings
should be held without a
light; and the Brethren set their faces
against superstition. They forbade ghost-stories; they
condemned
the popular old-wives'
tales about tokens, omens and death-birds;
they insisted that, in case
of illness, no meddling busybody should
interfere with the doctor;
and thus, as homely, practical folk, they
aimed at health of body and
of mind.
But the chief object of
their ambition was health of soul.
As the
revival deepened, the
number of meetings increased. Not a
day
passed without three
meetings for the whole congregation.
At five
in the morning they met in
the hall, and joined in a chorus of
praise. At the dinner hour they met again, and
then, about nine
o'clock, after supper, they
sang themselves to rest. At an
early
period the whole
congregation was divided into ninety unions for
prayer, and each band met
two or three times a week. The
night was
as sacred as the day. As the night-watchman went his rounds,
he
sang a verse at the hour,
as follows:--
The clock is eight! to Herrnhut
all is told,
How Noah and his seven were saved
of old,
Hear, Brethren, hear! the hour of
nine is come!
Keep pure each heart, and chasten
every home!
Hear, Brethren, hear! now ten the
hour-hand shows;
They only rest who long for
night's repose.
The clock's eleven, and ye have
heard it all,
How in that hour the mighty God
did call.
It's midnight now, and at that
hour you know,
With lamp to meet the bridegroom
we must go.
The hour is one; through darkness
steals the day;
Shines in your hearts the morning
star's first ray?
The clock is two! who comes to
meet the day,
And to the Lord of days his homage
pay?
The clock is three! the Three in
One above
Let body, soul and spirit truly
love.
The clock is four! where'er on
earth are three,
The Lord has promised He the
fourth will be.
The clock is five! while five away
were sent,
Five other virgins to the marriage
went!
The clock is six, and from the
watch I'm free,
And every one may his own watchman
be!
At this task all male
inhabitants, over sixteen and under sixty,
took their turn. The watchman, in the intervals between
the hours,
sang other snatches of
sacred song; and thus anyone who happened to
be lying awake was
continually reminded of the presence of God.
On Sunday nearly every hour
of the day was occupied by services.
At
five there was a short
meeting, known as the "morning blessing."
>From six to nine there
were meetings for the several "choirs."
At
ten there was a special
service for children. At eleven
there was
morning worship in the
Parish Church. At one the Chief
Elder gave a
general exhortation. At three, or thereabouts, there was a
meeting,
called the "strangers'
service," for those who had not been able to
go to Church; and then the
Count or some other layman repeated the
morning sermon. At four there was another service at
Berthelsdorf;
at eight another service at
Herrnhut; at nine the young men marched
round the settlement
singing hymns; and on Monday morning these
wonderful folk returned to
their labour like giants refreshed with
new wine. Their powers of endurance were
miraculous. The
more
meetings they had the more
they seemed able to stand.
Sometimes the
good Pastor Schwedler, of
Görlitz, would give them a sermon three
hours long; and sometimes,
commencing at six in the morning, he held
his congregation enthralled
till three in the afternoon.
Again, the Brethren
listened day by day to a special message from
God. We come now to the
origin of the Moravian Text-book.
As the
Count was a great believer
in variety, he very soon started the
practice, at the regular
evening singing meeting, of giving the
people a short address on
some Scriptural text or some verse from a
hymn. As soon as the singing meeting was over
he read out to the
company the chosen passage,
recommended it as a suitable subject for
meditation the following
day, and next morning had the text passed
round by the Elders to
every house in Herrnhut. Next year
(1728)
the practice was better
organized. Instead of waiting for
the Count
to choose, the Elders
selected in advance a number of texts and
verses, and put them all
together into a box; and then, each
evening, one of the Elders
put his hand into the box and drew the
text for the following
day. The idea was that of a
special
Providence. If Christ, said the Count, took a
special interest in
every one of His children,
He would also take the same kindly
interest in every company
of believers; and, therefore, He might be
safely trusted to guide the
hand of the Elder aright and provide the
"watchword" needed for the
day. Again and again he exhorted
the
Brethren to regard the text
for the day as God's special message to
them; and finally, in 1731,
he had the texts for the whole year
printed, and thus began
that Brethren's Text-book which now appears
regularly every year, is
issued in several tongues, and circulates,
in every quarter of the
globe, among Christians of all
denominations.80
In order, next, to keep in
touch with their fellow-Christians the
Brethren instituted a
monthly Saturday meeting, and that Saturday
came to be known as
"Congregation Day." {Feb. 10th, 1728.} At this
meeting the Brethren
listened to reports of evangelical work in
other districts. Sometimes there would be a letter from
a
travelling Brother;
sometimes a visitor from some far-distant
strand. The meeting was a genuine sign of moral
health. It
fostered broadness of mind,
and put an end to spiritual pride.
Instead of regarding
themselves as Pietists, superior to the
average professing
Christians, the Brethren now rejoiced to hear of
the good done by
others. They prayed not for their
own narrow
circle alone, but for all
rulers, all churches, and all people that
on earth do dwell; and
delighted to sing old Brethren's hymns,
treating of the Church
Universal, such as John Augusta's "Praise God
for ever" and "How amiable
Thy tabernacles are." At this
monthly
meeting the Count was in
his element. He would keep his
audience
enthralled for hours
together. He would read them first
a piece of
news in vivid, dramatic
style; then he would suddenly strike up a
missionary hymn; then he
would give them a little more information;
and thus he taught them to
take an interest in lands beyond the sea.
Another sign of moral
health was the "Love-feast." As the
Brethren
met in each other's houses,
they attempted, in quite an unofficial
way, to revive the Agape of
Apostolic times; and to this end they
provided a simple meal of
rye-bread and water, wished each other the
wish, "Long live the Lord
Jesus in our hearts," and talked in a
free-and-easy fashion about
the Kingdom of God. And here the
Brethren were on their
guard. In the days of the Apostles
there had
been scandals. The rich had brought their costly food,
and the poor
had been left to pine. At Herrnhut this scandal was
avoided. For
rich and poor the diet was
the same, and came from a common fund; in
later years it was white
bread and tea; and in due time the
Love-feast took the form of
a meeting for the whole congregation.
Again, the Brethren were
wonderfully simple-minded. As we
read
about their various
meetings, it is clear that in their childlike
way they were trying to
revive the institutions of Apostolic times.
For this purpose they even
practised the ceremony of foot-washing,
as described in the Gospel
of St. John. To the Count the clear
command of Christ was
decisive. "If I then, your Lord and Master,"
said Jesus, "have washed
your feet, ye also ought to wash one
another's feet." What words, said the Count, could be
more binding
than these? "No man," he
declared, "can read John xiii. without
being convinced that this
should be done." He revived the
custom,
and made it both popular
and useful. The ceremony was
generally
performed by the young,
before some special festival. It
spread in
time to England and
Ireland, and was not abandoned till the early
years of the nineteenth
century81 (1818).
We come now to the origin
of the "choirs." As Zinzendorf
studied
the Gospel story, he came
to the conclusion that in the life of
Jesus Christ there was
something specially suitable to each estate
in life. For the married people there was Christ,
the Bridegroom of
His Bride, the Church; for
the single Brethren, the "man about
thirty years of age"; for
the single Sisters, the Virgin Mary; for
the children, the boy in
the temple asking questions. The
idea took
root. The more rapidly the settlement grew,
the more need there was
for division and
organization. For each class the
Master had a
special message, and,
therefore, each class must have its special
meetings and study its
special duties. For this purpose a
band of
single men--led by the
ascetic Martin Linner, who slept on bare
boards--agreed to live in
one house, spent the evenings in united
study, and thus laid the
basis of the Single Brethren's Choir {Aug.
29th, 1728.}. For the same purpose the single young
women, led by
Anna Nitschmann, agreed to
live in a "Single Sisters' House," and
made a covenant with one
another that henceforward they would not
make matrimony the highest
aim in life, but would rather, like Mary
of Bethany, sit at the feet
of Christ and learn of Him {May 4th,
1730.}. For the same purpose the married people
met at a
love-feast, formed the
"married choir," and promised to lead a pure
and holy life {Sept. 7th,
1733.}, "so that their children might be
plants of
righteousness." For the same
purpose the children, in due
time, were formed into a
"children's choir." The whole aim
was
efficiency and order. At first the unions were voluntary; in
time
they became
official.
As the years rolled on the
whole congregation was systematically
divided into ten "choirs,"
as follows:--The married choir, the
widowers, the widows, the
Single Brethren, the Single Sisters, the
youths, the great girls,
the little boys, the little girls, the
infants in arms. Each choir had its own president, its
own special
services, its own festival
day, its own love-feasts. Of
these
choirs the most important
were those of the Single Brethren and
Single Sisters. As the Brethren at Herrnhut were soon to
be busy in
evangelistic labours, they
found it convenient to have in their
ranks a number of men and
women who were not bound down by family
ties; and though the young
people took no celibate vows, they often
kept single through life
for the sake of the growing cause.
The system invaded the
sanctity of family life. As the
Count was a
family man himself, he very
properly took the deepest interest in
the training of little
children; and, in season and out of season,
he insisted that the
children of Christian parents should be
screened from the
seductions of the world, the flesh and the devil.
"It is nothing less than a
scandal," he said, "that people think so
little of the fact that
their children are dedicated to the Lord.
Children are little kings;
their baptism is their anointing; and as
kings they ought to be
treated from the first." For this
purpose he
laid down the rule that all
infants should be baptized in the hall,
in the presence of the
whole congregation; and as soon as the
children were old enough to
learn, he had them taken from their
homes, and put the little
boys in one school and the little girls in
another. And thus the burden of their education
fell not on the
parents, but on the
congregation.
Again, the Count carried
out his ideas in the "vasty halls of
death." Of all the sacred spots in Herrnhut
there were none more
sacred and more
awe-inspiring than the "God's Acre" which the
Brethren laid out on the
Hutberg. There, in the bosom of
Mother
Earth, the same division
into choirs was preserved. To the
Count
the tomb was a holy
place. If a visitor ever came to
Herrnhut, he
was sure to take him to the
God's Acre, and tell him the story of
those whose bones awaited
the resurrection of the just. The
God's
Acre became the scene of an
impressive service {1733.}. At an
early
hour on Easter Sunday the
Brethren assembled in the sacred presence
of the dead, and waited for
the sun to rise. As the golden
rim
appeared on the horizon,
the minister spoke the first words of the
service. "The Lord is
risen," said the minister. "He is risen
indeed!" responded the
waiting throng. And then, in the
beautiful
language of Scripture, the
Brethren joined in a solemn confession of
faith. The trombones that woke the morning
echoes led the anthem of
praise, and one and all, in
simple faith, looked onward to the
glorious time when those
who lay in the silent tomb should hear the
voice of the Son of God,
and be caught up in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air. To the Brethren the tomb was no abode of
dread.
In a tomb the Lord Himself
had lain; in a tomb His humble disciples
lay "asleep"; and
therefore, when a brother departed this life, the
mourners never spoke of him
as dead. "He is gone home," they said;
and so death lost his
sting.
Again, the Brethren had a
strong belief in direct answers to prayer.
It was this that led them
to make such use of the "Lot." As soon as
the first twelve Elders
were elected, the Brethren chose from among
the twelve a committee of
four by Lot; and in course of time the Lot
was used for a great
variety of purposes. By the Lot, as
we shall
see later on, the most
serious ecclesiastical problems were settled.
By the Lot a sister
determined her answer to an offer of marriage.
By the Lot a call to
service was given, and by the Lot it was
accepted or rejected. If once the Lot had been consulted,
the
decision was absolute and
binding. The prayer had been
answered,
the Lord had spoken, and
the servant must now obey.82
We have now to mention but
one more custom, dating from those great
days. It is one peculiar to the Brethren's
Church, and is known as
the "Cup of Covenant." It was established by the Single
Brethren,
{1729.} and was based on
the act of Christ Himself, as recorded in
the Gospel of St. Luke. As
the Master sat with His twelve disciples
in the Upper Room at
Jerusalem, we are told that just before the
institution of the Lord's
Supper,83 "He took the Cup and gave
thanks, and said, 'Take
this and divide it among yourselves'"; and
now, in obedience to this
command, this ardent band of young
disciples made a covenant
to be true to Christ, and passed the Cup
from hand to hand. Whenever a young brother was called out
to the
mission field, the whole
choir would meet and entrust him to Christ
in this simple and
scriptural way. It was the pledge
at once of
united service and united
trust. It spread, in course of
time, to
the other choirs; it is
practised still at the annual choir
festivals; and its meaning
is best expressed in the words of the
Brethren's Covenant
Hymn:--
Assembling here, a humble
band,
Our covenantal pledge
to take,
We pass the cup from hand to
hand,
From heart to heart,
for His dear sake.
It remains to answer two
important questions. As we study
the life
of the Herrnhut Brethren,
we cannot possibly fail to notice how
closely their institutions
resembled the old institutions of the
Bohemian Brethren. We have the same care for the poor, the
same
ascetic ideal of life, the
same adherence to the word of Scripture,
the same endeavour to
revive Apostolic practice, the same
semi-socialistic tendency,
the same aspiration after brotherly
unity, the same title,
"Elder," for the leading officials, and the
same, or almost the same,
method of electing some of these officials
by Lot. And, therefore, we
naturally ask the question, how far were
these Brethren guided by
the example of their fathers? The
reply
is, not at all. At this early stage in their history the
Moravian
refugees at Herrnhut knew
absolutely nothing of the institutions of
the Bohemian
Brethren.84 They had no historical
records in their
possession; they had not
preserved any copies of the ancient laws;
they brought no books but
hymn-books across the border; and they
framed their rules and
organized their society before they had even
heard of the existence of
Comenius's "Account of Discipline."
The
whole movement at Herrnhut
was free, spontaneous, original. It
was
not an imitation of the
past. It was not an attempt to
revive the
Church of the
Brethren. It was simply the result
of Zinzendorf's
attempt to apply the ideals
of the Pietist Spener to the needs of
the settlers on his
estate.
The second question is,
what was the ecclesiastical standing of the
Brethren at this time? They were not a new church or sect. They
had no separate ministry of
their own. They were members of
the
Lutheran Church, regarded
Rothe still as their Pastor, attended the
Parish Church on Sundays,
and took the Communion there once a month;
and what distinguished them
from the average orthodox Lutheran of
the day was, not any
peculiarity of doctrine, but rather their vivid
perception of a doctrine
common to all the Churches. As
the
Methodists in England a few
years later exalted the doctrine of
"conversion," so these
Brethren at Herrnhut exalted the doctrine of
the spiritual presence of
Christ. To them the ascended Christ
was
all in all. He had preserved the "Hidden Seed." He
had led them out
from Moravia. He had brought them to a
watch-tower. He
had
delivered them from the
secret foe. He had banished the
devouring
demon of discord, had
poured out His Holy Spirit upon them at their
memorable service in the
Parish Church, and had taught them to
maintain the unity of the
spirit in the bond of peace. He was
the
"Bridegroom of the Soul,"
the "Blood Relation of His People," the
"King's Son seeking for His
Bride, the Church," the "Chief Elder
pleading for the Church
before God." And this thought of the living
and reigning Christ was,
therefore, the ruling thought among the
Brethren. He had done three marvellous things for
the sons of men.
He had given His life as a
"ransom" for sin, and had thereby
reconciled them to God; He
had set the perfect example for them to
follow; He was present with
them now as Head of the Church; and
thus, when the Brethren
went out to preach, they made His
Sacrificial Death, His Holy
Life, and His abiding presence the main
substance of their Gospel
message.
CHAPTER
V.
THE EDICT OF BANISHMENT,
1729-1736.
But Zinzendorf was not long
allowed to tread the primrose path of
peace. As the news of his proceedings spread in
Germany, many
orthodox Lutherans began to
regard him as a nuisance, a heretic, and
a disturber of the peace;
and one critic made the elegant remark:
"When Count Zinzendorf
flies up into the air, anyone who pulls him
down by the legs will do
him a great service." He was
accused of
many crimes, and had many
charges to answer. He was accused
of
founding a new sect, a
society for laziness; he was accused of
holding strange opinions,
opposed to the teaching of the Lutheran
Church; he was accused of
being a sham Christian, a sort of
religious freak; and now he
undertook the task of proving that these
accusations were false, and
of showing all fair-minded men in
Germany that the Brethren
at Herrnhut were as orthodox as Luther, as
respected as the King, and
as pious as good old Dr. Spener himself.
His methods were bold and
straightforward.
He began by issuing a
manifesto {Aug. 12th, 1729.}, entitled the
"Notariats-Instrument." As this document was signed by all
the
Herrnhut Brethren, they
must have agreed to its statements; but, on
the other hand, it is
fairly certain that it was drawn up by
Zinzendorf himself. It throws a flood of light on his state
of
mind. He had begun to think more highly of the
Moravian Church.
He
regarded the Moravians as
the kernel of the Herrnhut colony, and now
he deliberately informed
the public that, so far from being a new
sect, these Moravians were
descendants of an ancient Church.
They
were, he declared, true
heirs of the Church of the Brethren; and
that Church, in days gone
by, had been recognized by Luther, Calvin
and others as a true Church
of Christ. In doctrine that Church
was
as orthodox as the
Lutheran; in discipline it was far superior. As
long, therefore, as the
Brethren were allowed to do so, they would
maintain their old
constitution and discipline; and yet, on the
other hand, they would not
be Dissenters. They were not
Hussites;
they were not Waldenses;
they were not Fraticelli; they honoured the
Augsburg Confession; they
would still attend the Berthelsdorf Parish
Church; and, desirous of
cultivating fellowship with all true
Christians, they announced
their broad position in the sentence: "We
acknowledge no public
Church of God except where the pure Word of
God is preached, and where
the members live as holy children of
God." Thus Zinzendorf made
his policy fairly clear. He wanted
to
preserve the Moravian
Church inside the Lutheran Church!85
His next move was still
more daring. He was a man of
fine
missionary zeal. As the woman who found the lost piece of
silver
invited her friends and
neighbours to share in her joy, so
Zinzendorf wished all
Christians to share in the treasure which he
had discovered at
Herrnhut. He believed that the
Brethren there
were called to a world-wide
mission. He wanted Herrnhut to be
a
city set on a hill. "I have
no sympathy," he said, "with those
comfortable people who sit
warming themselves before the fire of the
future life." He did not sit long before the fire
himself. He
visited the University of
Jena, founded a society among the
students, and so impressed
the learned Spangenberg that that great
theological scholar soon
became a Brother at Herrnhut himself.
He
visited the University of
Halle, and founded another society of
students there. He visited Elmsdorf in Vogtland, and
founded a
society consisting of
members of the family of Count Reuss.
He
visited Berleburg in
Westphalia, made the acquaintance of John
Conrad Dippel, and tried to
lead that straying sheep back to the
Lutheran fold. He visited Budingen in Hesse, discoursed
on
Christian fellowship to the
"French Prophets," or "Inspired Ones,"
and tried to teach their
hysterical leader, Rock, a little wisdom,
sobriety and charity. He attended the coronation of Christian
VI.,
King of Denmark, at
Copenhagen, was warmly welcomed by His Majesty,
received the Order of the
Danebrog, saw Eskimos from Greenland and a
negro from St. Thomas, and
thus opened the door, as we shall see
later on, for the great
work of foreign missions.
Meanwhile, he was
sending messengers in all
directions. He sent two Brethren
to
Copenhagen, with a short
historical account of Herrnhut. He
sent
two others to London to see
the Queen, and to open up negotiations
with the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge. He
sent another
to Sweden; others to
Hungary and Austria; others to Switzerland;
others to Moravia; others
to the Baltic Provinces, Livonia and
Esthonia. And everywhere his object was the
same--the formation of
societies for Christian
fellowship within the National Church.
At this point, however, he
acted like a fanatic, and manifested the
first symptoms of that weak
trait in his character which nearly
wrecked his career. As he pondered one day on the state of
affairs
at Herrnhut, it suddenly
flashed upon his mind that the Brethren
would do far better without
their ancient constitution. He
first
consulted the Elders and
Helpers {Jan. 7th, 1731.}; he then summoned
the whole congregation; and
there and then he deliberately proposed
that the Brethren should
abolish their regulations, abandon their
constitution, cease to be
Moravians and become pure Lutherans.
At
that moment Zinzendorf was
calmly attempting to destroy the Moravian
Church. He did not want to see that Church
revive. For some
reason
of his own, which he never
explained in print, he had come to the
conclusion that the
Brethren would serve Christ far better without
any special regulations of
their own. But the Brethren were
not
disposed to meek
surrender. The question was keenly
debated. At
length, however, both sides
agreed to appeal to a strange tribunal.
For the first time in the
history of Herrnhut a critical question
of Church policy was
submitted to the Lot.86 The
Brethren took two
slips of paper and put them
into a box. On the first were
the
words, "To them that are
without law, as without law, that I might
gain them that are without
law," 1 Cor. ix. 21; on the second the
words, "Therefore,
Brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions
which ye have been taught,"
2 Thess. ii. 15. At that moment
the