§ 162.5. During the controversy in the Dutch Reformed Church between Voetians and Cocceians, beginning in A.D. 1658, the former favoured the pietistic movement. In the German Pietist controversy the Cocceians were with the Pietists in their biblical orthodoxy joined with confessional indifferentism, but with the orthodox in their liberality and breadth on matters of life and conduct. The earnest, practical piety of the Voetians, again, made them sympathise with the Lutheran Pietists, and their zeal for pure doctrine and the Church confession brought them into relation with the orthodox Lutherans. As discord between the theologians arose over the obligation of the Sabbath law, so the difference among the people arose out of the question of Sabbath observance. The Voetians maintained that the decalogue prohibition of any form of work on Sabbath was still fully binding, while the Cocceians, on the ground of Mark ii. 27, Galatians iv. 9, Colossians ii. 16, etc., denied its continued obligation, their wives often, to the annoyance of the Voetians, sitting in the windows after Divine service with their knitting or sewing. But the opposition did not stop there; it spread into all departments of life. The Voetians set great value upon fasting and private meditation, avoided all public games and plays, dressed plainly, and observed a simple, pious mode of life; their pastors wore a clerical costume, etc. The Cocceians, again, fell in with the customs of the time, mingled freely in the mirth and pastimes of the people, went to public festivals and entertainments, their women dressed in elegant, stylish attire, their pastors were not bound by hard and fast symbols, but had full Scripture freedom, etc.—Continuation, § [169, 2].
§ 162.6. France, Germany, and Switzerland.—The Reformed church of France has gained imperishable renown as a martyr-church. Fanatical excesses, however, appeared among the prophets of the Cevennes (§ [153, 4]), the fruits of which continued down into the eighteenth century, and appeared now and again in England, Holland, and Germany (§ [160, 2], [7]).—In Germany the Reformed church, standing side by side with the numerically far larger Lutheran church, had much of the sternness and severity that characterized the Romanic-Calvinistic party in doctrine, worship, and life greatly modified; but where the Reformed element was predominant, as in the Lower Rhine, it was correspondingly affected by a contrary influence. The Reformed church in Germany in its service of praise kept to the psalms of Marot and Lobwasser (§ 143, 2). Maurice of Hesse published Lobwasser’s in A.D. 1612, accompanied by some new bright melodies, for the use of the churches in the land. Lutheran hymns, however, gradually found their way into the Reformed church, which also produced two gifted poets of its own. Louisa Henrietta, Princess of Orange, wife of the great elector, and Paul Gerhardt’s sovereign, wrote “Jesus my Redeemer lives;” and Joachim Neander, pastor in Bremen, wrote, “Thou most Highest! Guardian of mankind,” “To heaven and earth and sea and air,” “Here behold me, as I cast me.”—In German Switzerland the noble Breitinger of Zürich, who died A.D. 1645, the greatest successor of Zwingli and Bullinger, wrought successfully during a forty years’ ministry, and did much to revive and quicken the church life. That the spirit of Calvin and Beza still breathed in the church of Geneva is proved by the reception given there to such men as Andreä (§ [160, 1]), Labadie (§ [163, 7]), and Spener (§ [159, 3]).
§ 162.7. Foreign Missions.—From two sides the Reformed church had outlets for its Christian love in the work of foreign missions; on the one side by the cession of the Portuguese East Indian colonies to the Netherlands in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and on the other side by the continuous formation of English colonies in North America throughout the whole century. In regard to missionary effort, the Dutch government followed in the footsteps of her Portuguese predecessors. She insisted that all natives, before getting a situation, should be baptized and have signed the Belgic Confession, and many who fulfilled these conditions remained as they had been before. But the English Puritans settled in America showed a zeal for the conversion of the Indians more worthy of the Protestant name. John Eliot, who is rightly styled the apostle of the Indians, devoted himself with unwearied and self-denying love for half a century to this task. He translated the Bible into their language, and founded seventeen Indian stations, of which during his lifetime ten were destroyed in a bloody war. Eliot’s work was taken up by the Mayhew family, who for five generations wrought among the Indians.The last of the noble band, Zacharias Mayhew, died on the mission field in A.D. 1803, in his 87th year.[479]—Continuation, § [172, 5].
V. Anti- and Extra-Ecclesiastical Parties.
§ 163. Sects and Fanatics.
Socinianism during the first decades of the century made extraordinary progress in Poland, but then collapsed under the persecution of the Jesuits. Related to the continental Anabaptists were the English Baptists, who rejected infant baptism; while the Quakers, who adopted the old fanatical theory of an inner light, set baptism and the Lord’s supper entirely aside. In the sect of the Labadists we find a blending of Catholic quietist mysticism and Calvinistic Augustinianism. Besides those regular sects, there were various individual enthusiasts and separatists. These were most rife in the Netherlands, where the free civil constitution afforded a place of refuge for all exiles on account of their faith. Here only was the press free enough to serve as a thoroughgoing propaganda of mysticism and theosophy. Finally the Russian sects, hitherto little studied, call for special attention.
§ 163.1. The Socinians (§ 148, 4).—The most important of the Socinian congregations in Poland, for the most part small and composed almost exclusively of the nobility, was that at Racau in the Sendomir Palatinate. Founded in 1569, this city, since 1600 under James Sieninski, son of the founder, recognised Socinianism as the established religion; and an academy was formed there which soon occupied a distinguished position, and gave such reputation to the place that it could be spoken of as “the Sarmatian Athens.” But the congregation at Lublin, next in importance to that of Racau, was destroyed as early as 1627 by the mob under fanatical excitement caused by the Jesuits. The same disaster befell Racau itself eleven years later. A couple of idle schoolboys had thrown stones at a wooden crucifix standing before the city gate, and had been for this severely punished by their parents, and turned out of school. The Catholics, however, made a complaint before the senate, where the Jesuits secured a sentence that the school should be destroyed, the church taken from “the Arians,” the printing press closed, but the ministers and teachers outlawed and branded with infamy. And the Jesuits did not rest until the Reichstag at Warsaw in 1658 issued decrees of banishment against “all Arians,” and forbad the profession of “Arianism” under pain of death.—The Davidist non-adoration party of Transylvanian Unitarians (§ 148, 3) was finally overcome, and the endeavours after conformity with the Polish Socinians prevailed at the Diet of Deesch in 1638, where all Unitarian communities engaged to offer worship to Christ, and to accept the baptismal formula of Matthew xxviii. 19. And under the standard of this so called Complanatio Deesiana 106 Unitarian congregations, with a membership of 60,000 souls, exist in Transylvania to this day.—In Germany Socinianism had, even in the beginning of the century, a secret nursery in the University of Altdorf, belonging to the territory of the imperial city of Nuremberg. Soner, professor of medicine, had been won over to this creed by Socinians residing at Leyden, where he had studied in 1597, 1598, and now used his official position at Altdorf for, not only instilling his Unitarian doctrines by means of private philosophical conversations into the minds of his numerous students, who flocked to him from Poland, Transylvania, and Hungary, but also for securing the adhesion of several German students. Only after his death in 1612 did the Nuremberg council come to know about this propaganda. A strict investigation was then made, all Poles were expelled, and all the Socinian writings that could be discovered were burned.—The later Polish Exultants sought and found refuge in Germany, especially in Silesia, Prussia, and Brandenburg, as well as in the Reformed Palatinate, and also founded some small Unitarian congregations, which, however, after maintaining for a while a miserable existence, gradually passed out of view. They had greater success and spread more widely in the Netherlands, till the states-general of 1653, in consequence of repeated synodal protests, and on the ground of an opinion given by the University of Leyden, issued a strict edict against the Unitarians, who now gradually passed over to the ranks of the Remonstrants (§ [161, 2]) and the Collegiants. Also in England, since the time of Henry VIII., antitrinitarian confessors and martyrs were to be found. Even in 1611, under James I., three of them had been consigned to the flames. The Polish Socinians took occasion from this to send the king a Racovian Catechism; but in 1614 it was, by order of parliament, burned by the hands of the hangman. The Socinians were also excluded from the benefit of the Act of Toleration of 1689, which was granted to all other dissenters (§ [155, 3]). The progress of deism, however, among the upper classes (§§ [164, 3]; [171, 1]) did much to prevent the extreme penal laws being carried into execution.—The following are the most distinguished among the numerous learned theologians of the Augustan age of Socinian scholarship, who contributed to the extending, establishing, and vindicating of the system of their church by exegetical, dogmatic, and polemical writings: John Crell, died 1631; Jonas Schlichting, died 1661; Von Wolzogen, died 1661; and Andr. Wissowatius, a grandson of Faustus Socinus, died 1678; and with these must also be ranked the historian of Polish Socinianism, Stanislaus Lubienicki, died 1675, whose “Hist. Reformat. Polonicæ,” etc., was published at Amsterdam in 1685.
§ 163.2. The Baptists of the Continent.
- The Dutch Baptists (§ 147, 2). Even during Menno’s lifetime the Mennonites had split into the Coarse and the Fine. The Coarse, who had abandoned much of the primitive severity of the sect, and were by far the most numerous, were again divided during the Arminian controversy into Remonstrants and Predestinationists. The former, from their leader, were called Galenists, and from having a lamb as the symbol of their Church, Lambists. The latter were called Apostoolers from their leader, and Sunists because their churches had the figure of the sun as a symbol. The Lambists, who acknowledged no confession of faith, were most numerous. In A.D. 1800, however, a union of the two parties was effected, the Sunists adopting the doctrinal position of the Lambists.—During the time when Arminian pastors were banished from the Netherlands, three brothers Van der Kodde founded a sect of Collegiants, which repudiated the clerical office, assigned preaching and dispensation of sacraments to laymen, and baptized only adults by immersion. Their place of baptism was Rhynsburg on the Rhine, and hence they were called Rhynsburgers. Their other name was given them from their assemblies, which they styled collegia.
- The Moravian Baptists (§ 147, 3). The Thirty Years’ War ruined the flourishing Baptist congregations in Moravia, and the reaction against all non-Catholics that followed the battle of the White Mountain near Prague, in A.D. 1620, told sorely against them. In A.D. 1622 a decree for their banishment was issued, and these quiet, inoffensive men were again homeless fugitives. Remnants of them fled into Hungary and Transylvania, only to meet new persecutions there. A letter of protection from Leopold I., A.D. 1659, secured them the right of settling in three counties around Pressburg. But soon these rigorous persecutions broke out afresh; they were beset by Jesuits seeking to convert them, and when this failed they were driven out or annihilated. At last, by A.D. 1757-1762, they were completely broken up, and most of them had joined the Roman Catholic church. A few families preserved their faith by flight into South Russia, where they settled in Wirschenka. When the Toleration Edict of Joseph II., of A.D. 1781, secured religious freedom to Protestants in Austria, several returned again to the faith of their fathers, in the hope that the toleration would be extended to them; but they were bitterly disappointed. They now betook themselves to Russia, and together with their brethren already there, settled in the Crimea, where they still constitute the colony of Hutersthal.