"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

DOCTRINES.

In plainness of speech, behavior, and apparel, in opposition to war, to oaths, and to a paid ministry, in a belief in the teachings of the Divine Spirit and in the inferiority of the written word to the indwelling Spirit, in discarding religious forms, in opposition to priest-craft or a hierarchy, and, although not practising silent worship, yet in their desire to live “in the stillness,” the Schwenkfelders resemble Quakers. We might almost say that they are Quakers of an older type (Quakers it may be of whom George Fox had never heard). They differ from Quakers in employing stated prayers, in electing preachers, in not acknowledging the spiritual equality of women, and in their peculiar doctrine of the “glory of the manhood of Jesus Christ,—how it is no creature.”[156]

We give from the Erläuterung, or Explanation, some striking extracts upon some of these points. Upon the word of God, Schwenkfeld and Illyricus had a violent contest. Schwenkfeld holds that the tables upon which God writes, and the book or paper upon which man writes, are entirely two kinds of thing: between all printed and written books in the world and the true word of God a fundamental difference is to be maintained. The word is a living, internal, spiritual word, and can only be contained in the book of the believing heart.[157] Faith existed many hundred years before the Scripture. It proceeded from the eternal Word or Son of God, Jesus Christ, and from God, the All-powerful.[158]

Against what are called “the means of grace” Schwenkfeld preached. (Spiritual things, it is said, come not through canals.) Schwenkfeld maintained that Christ is only to be sought above with the Father, and thence we must all draw that which will make us upright and blessed. This was also recognized by the leaders who came out from the papacy; but there came a time when they taught that Christ and salvation were to be found below in external works and worship. But Schwenkfeld neither could nor would admit that Christ and the Holy Spirit were in outward works of preaching and hearing and in elements of this earthly existence, in water, bread, and wine.[159]

On baptism we find the following: The first and most eminent work of the sacrament of baptism is, the internal grace of inworking faith in the love of God, which moves, glows, and lives through the outpouring of the heavenly waters which flow from the Word of God, which is Christ. The other point is the external word and water which is outwardly poured upon and washes the body outwardly as the internal does the soul.

John the Baptist says, “I baptize with water to repentance, but he who comes after me will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Here he distinguishes the work of the minister from the office of the Lord, and the visible water from the Holy Spirit.

Ambrose says, “Peter has not purified, nor Ambrose, nor Gregory, for ours is the ministry, but thine, Lord, are the sacraments. It is not the work of man to give divine things, thine is it, Lord, and the Father’s, who says through the prophets [prophet,] I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”

That the subject of the Holy Supper is especially weighty may be judged by the agitations on account of it, and by the fact that on this account many thousands in many lands have been killed and burnt. And this was the article upon which the Reformers, with their gloriously begun work, fell to pieces. Upon this article Luther renounced his friendship to Schwenkfeld, and they publicly differed.[160]

Schwenkfeld thought that when they came out from the papacy they should preach the gospel in its purity, instruct old and young in the catechism, and earnestly pray until they could come to the right use of the sacrament.... Whereby whole parishes, towns, and countries should not at once be taken up, as if fit for the table of the Lord. But it should be held with those who received the word, and in whom there were tokens of amendment, whether these were only Caleb and Joshua. Schwenkfeld declared that he had no command to establish the sacraments, but his command had been to spread the gospel and point every man to Jesus Christ. “But we are comforted that we are instructed by God and from the Holy Scripture that our soul’s salvation is necessarily placed on no outward thing, but that one thing is needful.” (Luke x.) “But we pray the Lord Jesus Christ that he will reveal a right use of the sacraments, and himself establish them. We strive, moreover, to hold his supper daily with the Lord Christ, in the spirit of faith.” (Rev. iii.[161]) But though Schwenkfeld did not feel called upon to establish the sacraments, there is nothing in the catechism of the society opposed to the external rites.

The twelfth chapter of the Explanation, containing nearly eighty pages, is devoted to Schwenkfeld’s peculiar doctrine, of which I shall content myself with the heading of the chapter, as follows: “Of the divine Sonship and glory of the Manhood of Jesus Christ, that the same is no creature, but extinguished in the Transfiguration, and changed into the Godhead.”

To one passage in the Catechism I would like to call attention:

Question.—How did God reveal himself in an external manner?

Answer.—First, when God, by his almighty word, framed the universe, by which he has shown how great, almighty, wise, and good he is.[162]

And now may we not also rest our souls upon these expressions from the constitution of the Schwenkfelder society, translated almost literally?

In the nature of God, we first perceive love as that noble and outflowing power which binds God and men together.... If the society build upon this fundamental part of the divine nature, namely, love, then their only immovable aim will be, first, the glory of God, and second, the promotion of the common weal of every member.

---

The preceding article is published nearly as it appeared in the second edition of this work, which was issued late in 1873, with the date 1874. Almost as soon as the edition appeared, I learned that baptism had been introduced among the Schwenkfelders at a meeting held a few months before; and that perhaps in two cases it had also been administered at the approach of death.

In the spring of the present year, 1882, I visited a Schwenkfelder settlement in the upper part of Montgomery County, and was hospitably entertained at the house of one of their preachers. German or the Pennsylvania dialect was the language of the family. On Sunday I attended church, where, as before in another locality, the services were in German, as were nearly all the proceedings in the Sunday-school. Here I learned that the rite of the Supper has also been introduced among the Schwenkfelders, though not without opposition. I inquired on what grounds the opposition was brought, but received no satisfactory reply.

At the house of my entertainer I was shown a volume, published in 1879, containing a genealogical record of the descendants of the Schwenkfelders in this country, to which is prefixed a historical sketch by C. Heydrick, a lawyer of Franklin, Pennsylvania.

Herein it is stated that Schwenkfeld differed with Luther on several points; chiefly on the eucharist, the efficacy of the divine word, the human nature of Christ, and baptism.

Schwenkfeld held, says the writer, that the penitent believer partakes of the bread and the body of the Lord, not only at the sacramental altar, but elsewhere.

On the second point Schwenkfeld denied that the external word in the Scriptures has the power of healing and renewing the mind, but ascribed this power to the internal word, Christ himself. He regretted that Luther, who at first agreed with him, saw fit afterward to ascribe to the written or preached word the efficacy which is only in Christ, the eternal word.

Further, Schwenkfeld rejected infant baptism, and held that baptism and the Supper were not intended as means by which the unregenerate partaker can obtain salvation.

Two other volumes on these subjects have very lately come within my notice. One in German, by a pastor named Kadelbach, published about 1860, at Lauban, which is within forty miles of the city of Liegnitz, where Schwenkfeld was canon in a church. As early as 1846, in composing a history of the village of Probsthayn (where some of the Schwenkfelders formerly lived), he added to it some material concerning these people.

As this subject attracted attention, he endeavored to obtain material for a history of them, in which matter he met with much difficulty. It came to pass, however, that the Schwenkfelders in America sent an inquiry to the burgomaster of Probsthayn, asking whether there were still Schwenkfelder communities (Gemeinden) there. This inquiry came, in 1855, into the hands of Kadelbach, who was very glad to communicate with the Schwenkfelders in America, as he had never before been able to do. His volume is called “Complete History of Kaspar von Schwenkfeld and of the Schwenkfelders in Silesia, Upper Lusatia, and America.”[163] A copy has been placed in the archives of the German Society’s library in Philadelphia.

We may inter that the attention of the author was attracted to his subject by certain local objects or remains. He tells us that the Catholic chapel at Harpersdorf, and the graves on the cow-path (viehweg), are the last memorials that testify of the existence there, and of the persecution of the Schwenkfelders. The Catholic chapel was built for one of the missionaries who was striving to convert them. As to the graves on the cow-paths, the statement has before been quoted (in a note on [page 222]), that three hundred persons lay upon the cow-paths at Harpersdorf and Langenneudorff (or Langendorff).

The other volume in which the Schwenkfelders are especially noticed is Barclay’s Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth. London, 1876. Barclay finds that on several points the teaching of Schwenkfeld was identical with that of George Fox, the first Quaker. Barclay gives a passage from Schwenkfeld, in which he says that the true knowledge of Christ, that which is according to the Holy Ghost must be expected, not alone out of the Scriptures, but much more from the gifts of grace revealed by the Father, yet so that this revelation should always be in unison with the witness of the Scriptures.[164]

Struck with the similarity between the Schwenkfelders and Quakers, Barclay appears to have written to the former, and to have received an answer, from which the following passages are taken:

To Robert Barclay, England:

... “Judging from the brief notices of the teachings of George Fox in our possession, we have reason to believe that they did not differ materially from those of Schwenkfeld, and among the followers of both, here in America, there is a striking similarity in the almost total absence of formalities and ceremonies in their religious practices. Both are discarding judicial oaths, carnal weapons, and are unostentatious in dress.

“Notwithstanding the fact that the Friends are of English descent, having their books, worship, and conversation in the English language, and the followers of Schwenkfeld here all of it in German, yet there always existed a lively sympathy, love, and esteem between the parties.... It is, however, proper to mention the fact that neither in Europe nor here have the followers of Schwenkfeld at any time administered baptism and the Lord’s Supper.[165]

“Owing to the persecutions which prevailed from 1630 to 1640, the religious practices of our ancestors in Germany about that period were chiefly confined to meeting in private houses for prayer and admonition, and in endeavors in the daily work of life to imitate as much as possible the example of the heavenly Master.

“In the love of Christ, sincerely your friends,

“George Meschter.
“William Schultz.
“Jacob Meschter.
“Per Dan. S. Shultz.

“December 17th, 1875. Colebrookdale, Penna.”