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After singing another hymn, six prayers were offered, two in Swedish by the Swedish pastors, and four in German by Brunnholtz, Hartwick, Handschuh, and Mr. Kock. After another hymn a child was baptized, and a sermon preached by Handschuh. Hereupon the ministers, with a few of the congregation, received the Lord's Supper. In the afternoon Hartwick preached the ordination sermon.
When the church council of the congregation in Philadelphia sent a humble petition to the Synod in 1750, requesting permission to retain the services of Pastor Brunnholtz for themselves, they received the answer: We have no right to make changes without the previous knowledge and permission of the "Fathers in Europe." And why?
Hence we ought to have experienced and strong men, able to stand in the breach and to dare with patience and self-denial. You, highly venerable fathers, know full well that I am not the man. But I regard my dear colleague Brunnholtz as such a man, and wish that he had two or three colaborers like himself; that would help us. God would easily direct me to some smaller corner."
Pastor Schaum's call to New York was signed by the four pastors, Muhlenberg, Brunnholtz, Handschuh, and Kurtz as their own vocation, in their own name, not in the name of the congregation.
"We continued our labors upon the inner and outward upbuilding of the Church, because a small, divinely sanctified seed was noticed among them." What Brunnholtz and Muhlenberg looked for in the communicant members of their congregations whom they regarded as unconverted were, no doubt, the Halle symptoms. In 1748 submissiveness to be guided by the pastor was numbered among these marks.
The religious oath which Brunnholtz took reads, in part, as follows: "I, Peter Brunnholtz, do solemnly swear and before God Almighty do take an oath upon my soul . . . that I will abide by the pure and unadulterated Word of God, as, according to the sense of the Spirit, it has been diligently compiled from Holy Scripture against all errorists in the three chief Symbols, and especially also in the true Lutheran church-books, as the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, its Apology, the Smalcald Articles, the two Catechisms of Luther, and in the specific Formula of Concord, and that I will teach according to them."
When Muehlenberg came to Philadelphia in December, 1742, he presented his credentials and was accepted as pastor, in behalf of the congregation assembled in the Swedish Church, by the three elders and four vorsteher. The first change made by Muehlenberg and Brunnholtz was in 1746, partly for the purpose of legally securing the property.
That Muehlenberg was consulted and gave his consent is to be supposed, but that he gave way to the desires and plans of his associate is natural. At the Trappe, where Muehlenberg lived and had charge, he introduced an arrangement which was different from that at Philadelphia, and which may naturally be supposed to represent his views, as the other did those of Brunnholtz.
Germantown, continued Brunnholtz, had two teachers, Doeling, a former Moravian, being one of them, whose schools were attended by many children, some of them non-Lutherans. Another school near Germantown with twenty children had been closed for lack of a teacher. Muhlenberg stated: In Providence there had been a small school in the past year.
We see that Muehlenberg avoided the chief mistake of Brunnholtz in that he did not make the elders appointees of the pastor, but gave their election to the whole congregation. The constitution of 1746, in St. Michael's, Philadelphia, proved even more unsatisfactory as the congregation increased in size.
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