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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.
Next, the advocate of the Brethren was to supply the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations with a complete list of Moravian bishops and pastors, together with their handwriting and seal; and, finally, anyone who falsely claimed to belong to the Brethren's Church was to be punished as a wilful perjurer. The first reading was on March 28th, and the passage through the House of Commons was smooth.
He recognized the facts of the case, abolished the "Congregation of the Spirit," and laid the constitutional foundations of the Brethren's Church in North America . Thus Zinzendorf's scheme of union collapsed, and the first American experiment was a failure. Meanwhile, Bishop Spangenberg had been busy with the second.
In order, therefore, to restore the Bible to its proper position in Church esteem, the Brethren now established the Theological College at Gnadenfeld . There John Plitt took the training of the students in hand; there systematic lectures were given on Exegesis, Dogmatics, Old Testament Introduction, Church History, and Brethren's History; there, in a word, John Plitt succeeded in training a band of ministers who combined a love for the Bible with love for the Brethren's Church.
Formerly, when living in the south, he had a dangerous illness; and, at the request of the governor of Chateau Bay, he had been baptized by an English minister and got the name of William. On Christmas-day he was received into the brethren's congregation; and on the 2d of April 1795, admitted as a communicant to the Lord's table.
If the visitor goes to Ulster now and endeavours to trace the footsteps of Cennick, he will find it almost impossible to realize how great the power of the Brethren was in those palmy days. At Gracehill, near Ballymena, he will find the remains of a settlement. At Ballymena itself, now a growing town, he will find to his surprise that the Brethren's cause has ceased to exist.
He still had a healthy horror of sects and splits; he still regarded the Brethren's Church as a "Church within the Church"; he still insisted, with perfect truth, that as they had no distinctive doctrine they could not be condemned as a nonconforming sect; and the goal for which he was straining was that wheresoever the Brethren went they should endeavour not to extend their own borders, but rather to serve as a bond of union evangelical Christians of all denominations.
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."
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."
For more advanced students they have a Pædagogium at Niesky; and the classical education there corresponds to that imparted at our Universities. At Gnadenfeld they have a Theological Seminary, open to students from other churches. Fourth, there is the Brethren's medical work, conducted by a Diakonissen-Verband, or Nurses' Union. It was begun in 1866 by Dr. Hermann Plitt.
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