In Silesia the ruling church was Roman Catholic, but the Lutherans were generally tolerated. The Lutheran preachers, coming into contact with the Schwenkfelders, were often hostile and unfriendly to them; but the final self-banishment of the Pennsylvania colony was owing to the rigorous measures taken by the Jesuits for their conversion.[133]
In one of the persecutions of earlier times, we read of a certain Anthony Oelssner, who was called to strengthen the scattered faithful, about the year 1580; in which call he showed great diligence in prayer and preaching, until he was seized and lay imprisoned a while at Liegnitz. Afterward he was imprisoned at Löwenberg, in the tower, where he suffered almost the same strong temptations of Satan as we read in the lives of the fathers that old Anthony did, from which he was happily set free, as he writes in a long letter. One of his letters is from the lowest dungeon at Vienna, where he lay among thieves and malefactors.
He was also dragged about in the trenches and galleys,[134] all which he bore without a murmur, and met his persecutors with cheerfulness, encouraging the faithful by letters when he did not lie in dungeons too dark, or when ink, paper, etc., were not denied him. Of these writings a great part is still extant.
Certain of the Schwenkfelder prisoners, it seems, were sent upon the galleys to the Turkish war. “In taking the castle Gran, in 1593, they were obliged to go before the soldiers, through a narrow street; but they never killed a Turk, nor stained their hands with the blood of men (as is proper for the soldiers of Christ).”[135]
Another sufferer, old Martin John, tells how, when he lived at Kaufig, he beheld the lives of the priests, how they loaded themselves with eating and drinking, avarice and gaming, dancing and debauchery, and produced uproar in the beer-houses, and made a nine-pin alley, and played together in the parsonage yard. “And I thought that I could not any longer approve their godlessness. I was thus induced to stay at home, and read to my wife and children, and call them to repentance. Then the priest ran to my landlord,[136] and complained of me, but he would not listen, and I was left in peace for a year. Then my old master died, and his son, to please the godless preacher, drove me from my paternal inheritance.” The priest was named George M., and this was in 1584.
Martin John also says that the priest made jest of the Holy Ghost, saying, “Thou wilt have to wait long before the Holy Ghost will come and teach thee.”
Martin tells further, that he found a property cheap at Armenruh; but there he saw the same manner of life. “I did not have to go far, but heard in my own yard how the priest fiddled, and the rest danced and cried out, and found it much worse than in my own (former) home. So I stayed at home, and read, prayed, and sang, and other people came to hear. Then the priests ran to our landlords, and we were put into prison, where I was kept over four years, and the others over a year, and to these nothing was given to eat nor to drink.”