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Updated: May 25, 2025
For some time he clung to the hope that the verdict of Parliament and the common sense of Englishmen would be sufficient protection against abuse; and he gallantly defended the character of Rimius, and spoke with generous enthusiasm of Whitefield.
It was "a faithful monitor to souls who, having been first washed through the blood of Jesus, do now live in the Spirit, to walk also in the Spirit." To the Brethren this little Christian guide was a treasure. As long as they ordered their daily conduct by these "convenient rules for the house of their pilgrimage," they could smile at the sneers of Rimius and his supporters.
As long as the Brethren remained silent, their enemies asserted that this very silence was a confession of guilt; and some mischievous scoundrel, in the name, but without the consent, of the Brethren, inserted a notice in the General Advertiser that they intended to reply to Rimius in detail.
The good Bishop knew nothing of his subject. As he could not read the German language, he had to rely for his information on the English editions of the works of Rimius and Frey; and all he did was to collect in one volume the nastiest passages in their indictments, compare the Brethren with certain queer sects of the Middle Ages, and thus hold them up before the public as filthy dreamers and debauchees of the vilest order.
It is needless to give the Brethren's defence in detail. The plain facts of the case were beyond all dispute. In two ways the accusations of Rimius and Frey were out of court.
At any moment they could marry a couple against their will, divorce them when they thought fit, tear children from their parents, and dispatch them to distant corners of the earth. But the great object of the Moravians, said Rimius, was to secure liberty for themselves to practise their sensual abominations.
At one service held in Fetter Lane, Count Zinzendorf, said Rimius, had declared that the seventh commandment was not binding on Christians, and had recommended immorality to his congregation.131 It is impossible to give the modern reader a true idea of the shocking picture of the Brethren painted by Rimius.
At Bedford a scandal-monger informed him that the Brethren were the worst paymasters in the town; and at Holbeck another avowed that the Brethren whom he had met in Yorkshire were quite as bad as Rimius had stated. As Wesley printed these statements in his journal they were soon read in every county in England. But Wesley himself did not assert that these statements were true.
For these reasons the Count made many enemies. He was criticized severely, and sometimes justly, by men of such exalted character as Bengel, the famous German commentator, and honest John Wesley in England; he was reviled by vulgar scribblers like Rimius; and thus, like his great contemporary, Whitefield, he
Johnson, and worked in union with such well-known Evangelical leaders as Rowland Hill, William Romaine, John Newton, Charles Wesley, Hannah More, Howell Harris, and Bishop Porteous, the famous advocate of negro emancipation. Above all, he cleansed the Brethren's reputation from the last stains of the mud thrown by such men as Rimius and Frey.
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