"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

BOOKS.

I have mentioned that he whom I first visited brought out a number of large books for me to examine. They were all in the German language.

The first bore title, “The first part of the Christian, orthodox book, of the man noble, dear, and highly favored by God, Caspar Schwenckfeldt.” The volume was a folio; the place of printing not given; the date 1564. It is embellished by a large plate, which apparently represents Christ with Death and Satan under his feet. Below, upon the left, is a man in a furred robe kneeling, with the motto, “Caspar Schwenckfeldt von Ossing. Nil Christo triste recepto” (or, “If I have Christ, nothing makes me sad”). On the right is a troop of similar appearance, with the motto, “And the fellow-believers of the glories and truth of Jesus Christ.”[123]

Another ancient folio, bound in parchment, with brazen clasps, tips, and bosses, was said to be a volume of Schwenkfeld’s letters. There is no place of printing; the date is 1570. The same plate as the preceding. These epistles, says my host, are upon the popish doctrine and faith.

The third folio was of the same date, 1570, and was in a splendid state of preservation. This contains letters upon the Lutheran doctrine, with which Schwenkfeld did not agree.

Two of the folios brought out by my host were manuscripts, bound in leather, with brazen clasps. One of them had the great number of thirteen hundred and three pages, very neatly written in the German hand. It contained the sermons, “Postilla,” of Michael Hiller, preacher at Zobten, in Silesia, who “disappeared in God” in 1554; written and collected by Nicholas Detschke, 1564, and now written anew, 1747. I did not find the name of the copyist.

Although my host told me he that he had never been in Quaker meeting in his life, yet I found among his books a history of the rise, etc., of the Christian people called Quakers, originally written in Dutch by William Sewel, and by himself translated into English, from English translated into German (Hochdeutsch), 1742. This is Sewel’s History, one of the most celebrated of the Quaker books.

At the second house which I visited there lay in the window-seat several books in German. One was a large copy of the Scriptures, a clasped volume, with many plates. Lying loose in it were two plates of Caspar Schwenkfeld, in his furred robe, with beard descending upon his breast, and his motto (already given) in German: “Wenn ich Christum habe, so bin ich nicht traurig”; or, “If I have Christ, I am not sorrowful.” In selecting this motto, he may have had reference to his exiled condition.

(There seems to be among the Schwenkfelders much more regard than among most of our plain Pennsylvania Germans for the pictures, the “counterfeit presentments,” of men.[124])