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Pastoral Office and the General Priesthood in the Great Awakening

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

W.R. Ward
W.R. Ward*
Affiliation:
Peterfield, Southampton
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Extract

Whatever Luther may have said about the priesthood of all believers, it took more than a century and a half for the idea to receive full-scale treatment, and Spener, who achieved this during his time as Senior of Frankfurt (1660-86), approached the goal indirectly through editing Arndt’s sermons (1675). To catch the public eye he republished the introduction separately later in the year under the title Pia Desideria, or heartfelt desires for an improvement of the true evangelical church pleasing to God, with some Christian proposals to that end. With a dedication to all the overseers and pastors of the evangelical church it was now a deliberately programmatic writing. In this tract Spener castigated every class of society for their responsibility for the lamentable state of the Church, making suggestions for improved clerical training and preaching, which might have been made at any period of Church history. The real sting came in an explicit appeal to Luther on how best to realize the priesthood of all behevers. To spread the word of God more richly among the people there should be private gatherings under clerical leadership for the exchange of views and Bible study; more radically, there should be private gatherings for the exercise of the obligations of the general spritual priesthood. The faithful should teach, warn, convert, edify each other. These gatherings should be cells for the renewal of the Church. They would also enable Spener, the expert catechist, to drive home his conviction that Christianity was a way of life, learnt by doing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 26: The Ministry: Clerical and Lay , 1989 , pp. 303 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989

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References

1 This tract was reprinted in the Olms edition of Philipp Jakob Spener. Schriften, I (Hildes-heim, 1979), and was translated into English by Tappert, Theodore G. (Philadelphia, 1964) Google Scholar.

2 ‘What is the spiritual priesthood? It is the right which our Saviour Jesus Christ earned for all men, to which he anointed all his faithful through the Holy Spirit, by virtue of which they may and they ought to bring suitable sacrifices to God, to pray for themselves and others, and edify each other and their neighbours… From whom comes this spiritual priesthood? From Jesus Christ, the true high-priesthood according to the order of Melchizcdek I) which as he has no successor in his priesthood, but remains eternally the sole high-priest; also has 2) made his Christians to be priests 3) before his father to whom sacrifices have their sanctity solely from his son and are made acceptable to God’. Das Geistliche Priestertum is included in Spener Schriften 1. The copy here used is in P.J. Spener, Drey erbauliche Schriften, ed. J. G. Pririus (Frankfurt, 1717), pp. 14–15.

3 Ibid., pp. 42, 74, 76. For Spener’s change of tone, see Grunberg, Paul, Philipp jakob Spener (Göttingen, 1893-1906), 2, p. 171.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 2, p. 119.

5 Johannes, Wallmann, ‘Geistliche Erneuerung der Kirche nach Philipp Jakob Spener’, Pietismus und Neuzeit, 12 (1986), p. 29.Google Scholar

6 Spener held more clearly than Wesley that membership of these groups implied not with-drawal from the world but acceptance of responsibility for it. J. O. Rüttgardt, Heiliges Leben in der Welt. Grundzüge Christlicher Sittlichkeit nach Spener, P.J. (Bielefeld, 1978), pp. 146–7.Google Scholar

7 Spener, Drey erbauliche Schriflen: Das Geistliche Priestertum, Appendix; Martin Brecht, Martin Luther (Stuttgart, 1981–7), 1, pp.276, 354 seq. 2, pp.20, 36–8, 249–53; Luther’s Works, American ed. by J. Pelikan and H. T. Lehmann, 55 (Philadelphia, 1965), pp. 63–4.

8 Spener, P.J., Die allgemeine Gottesgelehrtheit aller glaubigen Christen und rechtschaffenen Theologen (Frankfurt, 1680), pp. 335–6. This work is to be reprinted in Spener Schriften, 3.Google Scholar

9 Cf. The Swabian Confession Art. VII: ‘To attain such faith and give it to us men, God has established the Pastoral Office or spoken word;… nor is there any other means, nor method, neither way nor bridge to receive faith’ (T. Harnack, Die Grundbekenntnisse der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche (Dorpat, 1845)). For a liberal commentary on the development of Lutheran clericalism sec Paul Drews, Der evanglische Geislliche in der deutsclien Vergangenheit (Jena, 1905), pp. 24, 40—4, 51. On Löscher sec Martin Grcschat, Zwischen Tradition und ncucm Anjang. Valentin Ernst Löscher und der Ausgang der lutlierischen Orthodoxie (Wittcn, 1971), pp. 137–42: Emanuel Hirsch, Geschichte der neum evangelischen Théologie (5 edn., Gütcrsloh, 1975), 2, pp. 202—5: Moritz von Engelhardt, Valentin Ernst Löscher, nach seinem Leben und Wirken (Stuttgart, 1856), pp. 74, 107. On the Lutheran ministry in general, sec Wilhelm Pauck,’The ministry in the time of the continental Reformation’ in The Ministry in Historical Perspectives, eds H. Richard Nicbuhr and Daniel D. Williams (New York, 1956), pp. 110—48.

10 Ottfried Kietzig, Die kirchliche Frömmigkeit in den evangelischen Gemeinden des Niederrheins (Dusseldorf, 1971), pp. 5, 22, 64.

11 On the churches of the Upper and Lower Rhine areas, see Max Goebel, Geschichle der christ-lichen Lebens in der rheinisch-westphalischen evangelixhen Kirche (Coblenz, 1849–52), 2, pp. 438–9, 459–60, 511–25.

12 There is a narrative of the conflict in Grünberg, Spener, 1, pp. 214–56.

13 Albrecht Ritschl, Geschichle des Pietismus (Bonn, 1880–86; repr. Berlin, 1966), 2, pp. 183–90: Wallmann, ‘Geistliche Erneuerung’, Pietismus und Neuzeit, 12, pp. 32–7.

14 Rudolf Mohr, ‘Die Krise des Amtverstandnisses im Spirirtualismus und Pietismus’, in Traditio-Krisis-Renovatio aus theologischer Sicht. Festschrift Winfried Zeller, eds B. Jaspert and R. Mohr (Marburg, 1976), pp. 143–71.

15 Rudiger Mack, Pietismus und Frühaufklärung an der Universität Giessen und in Hessen-Darmstadt (Giessen, 1984), p. 86.

16 The vast and often contentious literature about Arnold is summarized in Klaus Wetzel, Theologische Kirchengeschichtsschreibung im deutschen Protesuntismus, 1660–1760 (Giessen/Basel, 1983), pp. 175–209. See also Jürgen Büchsel, Gottfried-sein Verständnts von turche und Wiedergeburt (Witten, 1970): J. F. G. Goeters, ‘Gottfried Arnolds Anschauung von der Kirchengeschichte in ihrem Werdegang’ in Traditio-Krisis-Renovatio, pp. 241–57.

17 On Schaitberger see my paper, ‘“An Awakened Christianity”. The Austrian Protestants and their neighbours’, JEH 40 (1989), pp. 53–73.

18 For Muhlenberg see The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, trans, by Tappert, T. G. and Doberstein, John W. (Philadelphia, 1942-58): Die Korresponienz Heinrich Melchior Mühlenbergs aus der Anfangszeit des deutschen Luthertums in Nordamerika, ed. Kurt Aland (In progress, Berlin New York, 1986-).Google Scholar

19 On which see Ernst Staehlin, Die Christentumsgesellshaft in der Zeitder Aufklärung und der begin-nenden Erweckung (Basel, 1970).

20 Winfried Zeller, ‘Die kirchengeschichtliche Sicht des Mönchtums im Protestantismus, insbesonderc bei Gerhard Tersteegen’ in his Theologie und Frmmigkeit. Gesammelt Aufsatze, ed. Jaspert, B., (Marburg, 1971-8), 2, pp. 185–200 Google Scholar. For the view of Tersteegen as a Protestant Carmelite see Giovanna della Croce, Gerhard Tersteegen: Neubetebungder Mystik ah Ansatz einer kommenden spiritualität (Bern, 1979).

21 Cornelis Pieter van Andel, Gerhard Tersteegen. Leben und Werksein Platzin der Kirchengeschichte (Dusseldorf, 1973, original Dutch ed., Wageningen, 1961), esp. pp. 75, 160–6, 169.

22 Ordonnances Ecclésiastiques (Geneva, 1561), no. 2. The Reformed confessions from the West are conveniently collected by Niesel, W. in Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierte Kirche (Munich, 5 vols, n.d., W. 1937 &c)Google Scholar. Here 1, p. 43 [for the circum-stances in which this collection was produced, see Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich (London, 1987), 1, pp. 296–7]. See also C. Fabricius, Corpus Confessionum. Die Bekenntnisse der Christenheit (18 parts Berlin/Leipzig, 1928–44).

23 Duncan, Shaw, ‘The Inauguration of Ministers in Scotland, 1560—1620’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 16 (1966), pp. 35—8.Google Scholar

24 Gisbertius Voetius, Politicae Ecclesiasticae (Amsterdam, 1663–9), 1, pp. 12, 27; 2, pp. 8–12.

25 Niesel, Bekenntnisschriften, 4, p. 256.

26 These texts are conveniently gathered in The Confession of Faith; the Larger and Shorter Catechisms with the Scripture proofs at large… republished by the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (n. pl., 1976), pp. 108, 113, 248–9, 398. An official Gaelic Bible was not available in the Highlands till the early nineteenth century ( MacInncs, J., The Evangelical Movement in the Highlands of Scotland, 1688–1800 (Aberdeen, 1951), pp. 4, 62)Google Scholar. Westerkamp Marilyn J. demonstrates that the Westminster Confession could be made by the Scots-Irish into an instrument of revival, and of self-assertion against English assimilation in Ulster, Scotland and America, but not that it led to ‘the triumph of the laity’. Triumph of the Laity (New York, 1988).

27 Enno Conring, Kirche und Stoat nach der Lehre der niederlandischen Calvinisten in der ersten Halfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1065), p. 103; Voetius, Politicae Ecclesiasticae, i, p. 12.

28 On this paragraph see Kurt Guggisberg, Bernische Kirchenkunde (Bern, 1968), pp. 24, 89–90, 109, 244. Wernle justly comments that old customs died very hard in the Swiss churches, even in the case of the sacraments which they did not take over from Catholicism (which of course included ordination). P, Wernle, Der schweizerische Protestantismus im XVIII. Jahrhuniert (Tübingen, 1923-5), i, p. 65.Google Scholar

29 The institution is decribed in Joannis a Lasco Opera tam edita quam inedita, ed. Kuyper, A. (Amsterdam, 1866), 2, pp. 101–5 Google Scholar [French version in Toute la Forme et Manière du Ministère ecclésiastique, en l’Église des estrangers, dressée a Londres en Angleterre, tr. by Giles Clematius (n. pl., 1556)]: Originai Letters relative to the English Reformation, ed. by Hastings Robinson (Cambridge, 1846–7), 2, pp. 575: Robson Scott, W. D., ‘Josua Maler’s Visit to England in 1551’, Modem Language Review, 45 (1950), p. 351 Google Scholar. For modern comment: Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, 1, pp. 120—1: Lindeboom, J., Austin Friars. A History of the Dutch Reformed Church in London, 1550–1950 (The Hague, 1950), pp. 24–7 Google Scholar: Pettegree, Andrew, Foreign Protestant Communities in sixteenth-century London (Oxford, 1986), pp. 63—4.Google Scholar

30 A Dutch pastor at Middleburg told his English colleague in 1681, ‘Before the Belgick Churches were pester’d with the Dogmes of Cocceius, the ministry of the Word was exceeding successfull, many Hearers would weep at Sermons, proud sinners would quake and tremble at the word preached, multitudes were converted and reformed …’ ( Nuttall, G. F., ‘English Dissenters in the Netherlands, 1640–1689’, Nederlands Archiefvoor Kerkgeschicdnis, 59 (1979) 1 pp. 37–8)Google Scholar. Cf.Evans, Eifion, Daniel Rowland and the Great Evangelical Awakening in Wales (Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 39, 43Google Scholar; Prozesky, Martin H. ‘The Emergence of Dutch Pietism’, JEH 28 (1977), pp. 29–37 Google Scholar: Ernest Stoeffler, F., The Rise of Evangelical Pietism (Leiden, 1971)Google Scholar, passim.

31 Gottfried Mai, Die niederdeutsche Reformbewegung, Hospitium Ecclesiae Bd. 12 (Bremen, 1979). PP.110-11: Heiner Faulenbach, ‘Die Anfänge des Pietismus bei den Reformierten in Deutschland’, Pietismus und Neuzeit, 4 (1977—78), pp. 205—9.

32 On Lampe see Heinrich Heppe, Geschichte des Pietismus und der Mpstik in der Reformierten Kirche, namentlich der Niederlande (Leiden, 1879), pp. 236–40: Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, I, pp. 427–54: Mai, Niederdeutsche Reformbewegung, pp. 252–301: Gerrit Snijders, Friedrich Adolf Lampe, ein deutsche reformierte Theologe in Holland (Bremen, 1961): W. Hollweg, Geschichte des alteren Pietismus in den Reformieten Gemeinden Ostfrieslands (Aurich, 1978), pp. 151–3.

33 James, Tanis, Dutch Calvinistic Pietism in the Middle Colonies. A Study in the Life and Theology of Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (The Hague, 1967). The attempt by Herman Hermelink III to argue that, despite the contemporary estimates of Gilbert Tennent and Jonathan Edwards, Frelinghuysen was not a revivalist at all, actually shows that Frelinghuysen was a revivalist who approximated more nearly to the Voetian stamp than those who came later. ‘Another Look at Frelinghuysen and his “Awakening”’, Church History, 37 (1968), pp. 423–88.Google Scholar

34 Cf. ‘The Apostle inseparablie coupleth the gathering together of the saints with the work of the ministerie’. John, Penry, Three Treatises concerning Wales, ed. Williams, D. (Cardiff, 1960), p. 81.Google Scholar

35 JohnCotton on the Churches of New England, ed. Larzer Ziff (Cambridge,Mass., 1968), pp. 43–4. Cf. 82–3, 98–9. Cotton would not baptize his child Seaborn, born on the Atlantic passage, ‘at sea (not for want of fresh water, for, he held, sea water would have served:) 1. because he had no settled congregation there; 2. because a minister hath no power to give the seals but in his own congregation’. Morgan, E. S., Visible Saints. The History of a Puritan Idea (New York, 1963), p. 97. See also the New England ‘Platform of Church Discipline’ (1649). Cotton Mather, Mag-nalia Christi Americana (3 ed., Hartford, Conn., 1852: repr. Edinburgh, 1979), 2, pp. 220–1.Google Scholar

36 John, Winthrop, The History of New England, ed. Savage, J. (Boston, 1825-6), 1, pp. 217.Google Scholar

37 John Owen preserved a nice balance: ‘Spiritual gifts of themselves make no man actually a minister, yet no man can be made a minister according to the mind of Christ who is not a partaker of them … if the Lord Christ at any time or in any place cease to give out spiritual gifts unto men…then and in that place the ministry itself must cease’. Two Discourses concerning the Holy Spirit and his work (London, 1693), p. 232.

38 This theme is worked out in inimitable style under the heading ‘The principle of fellowship’ by DrNuttall, G. F. in Visible Saints. The Congregational Way (Oxford,1957), pp. 85–95; I am indebted to Dr Nuttall for much advice on the congregational doctrine of the ministry.Google Scholar

39 John, Winthrop, journal, 1630–1649, ed. James K. Hosmer (New York, 1908), 1, p. 116 Google Scholar.

40 An admirable account of the evolution of the ministry in New England is given in David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepherd (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972). The constitutional documents are collected in Williston, Walker, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (New York,1893). Much information about the constitution and English background of the American churches is given in Jon Butler, ‘Power, Authority and the Origins of the American Denominational Order. The English Churches in the Delaware Valley’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 68 (1978), 2, pp. 1–81.Google Scholar

41 Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, I, p. 340.

42 Ibid. p. 349.

43 Ibid., p 437.

44 Ibid., pp. 453, 492.

45 These developments are a main theme of J. W. T., Youngs Jnr., God’s Messengers. Religious Leadership in Colonial New England (Baltimore, 1976), esp. pp. 30–9, 64–78Google Scholar. See also G. Selement, Keepers of the Vineyard, The Puritan Ministry and Collective Culture in Colonial New England (Lanham, 1984.

46 This is one of the themes of Robert Middlekauf, The Mathers. Three Generations of Puritan Intel-lectuals, 1596–1728 (New York, 1971).

47 David Harlan argues that the whole mechanism of ministerial authority was much more frail than recent scholars have tended to suggest. (The Clergy and the Great Awakening in New England (Ann Arbor, 1980), pp. 13–30). When Mather came to recommend religious societies, they were not Spener’s ecclesiolae designed to optimize the general priesthood, but societies for the reformation of manners on the English pattern, designed to add lay pressure to that of the clergy in social regulation. James W., Jones, The Shattered Synthesis. New England Puritanism before the Great Awakening (New Haven, 1973), pp. 85–6.Google Scholar

48 Stoddard is justly prominent in the literature. See e.g. Jones, Shattered Synthesis, pp. 104–28: Perry Miller, ‘Solomon Stoddard’, Harvard Theological Review, 34 (1941), pp. 277–320.

49 See the old classic, Archibald, Alexander, The Log College (Philadelphia, 1851: repr. London, 1068).Google Scholar

50 Richard, Warch, ‘The Shepherd’s Tent. Education and Enthusiasm in the Great Awakening’, American Quarterly, 30 (1978), pp. 177–98 Google Scholar.

51 The most recent and spirited account of Davenport is given in Clarke Garret, Spirit Possession and Popular Religion. From the Camisards to the Shakers (Baltimore, 1987), pp. 119–126.

52 McLoughlin, W. G., New England Dissent, 1630–1833 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 1, pp. 329–488 Google Scholar: The Diary of Isaac Backus, ed. McLoughlin, W. G. (Providence, 1979), I, p. 570 Google Scholar; 2, p. 703. Backus (ibid., 1, pp. 74, 101) would not allow the power of ordination to be separated from the power of election. Cf. his Discourse Showing the Nature and Necessity of an Internal Call to Preach the Everlasting Gospel (1754) in Isaac Backus on Church, State and Calvinism. Pamphlets, 1754–1789, ed. McLoughlin, W. G.(Cambridge, Mass.,1968)Google Scholar; Lovejoy, D. S., Religious Enthusiasm in the New World (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 183–4.Google Scholar

53 This subject is vividly recreated by ,Marini, Stephen A., Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England(Cambridge, Mass., 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Pretty constandy keeping an eye on each other. Cf. Thomas, armer, Remarkson the antient and present state of the Congregational churches of Norfolk and Suffolk (1777) in his Miscellaneous Works (London, 1823), pp. 137–220d: Hall, Faithful Shepherd, pp. 221, 223–6.Google Scholar

55 W. R., Ward, ‘The relations of Enlightenment and religious revival in Central Europe and the English-speaking world’ in Reform and Reformation. England and the Continent c.1500-c.1750, ed. Baker, Derek (Oxford, 1979), pp. 294–7.Google Scholar

56 How the various nuances were to be recognized in the eighteenth century is attractively described by Isaac Watts in Posthumous Works (London, 1779), 2, pp. 158–62.

57 ‘Mr Harmer… thinks… that the spirit of the Methodists is hurtful to the peace and order of our settled churches. Dr Wood, who had large experience of Methodists was very clear … that very few of that people could walk comfortably and usefully with our churches’. John, Browne, History of Congregationalism and Memorials of the churches in Norfolk and Suffolk (London, 1877), p. 199 Google Scholar.

58 Nuttall, G. F., ‘Methodism and the older Dissent. Some perspectives’, United Reformed Church Historical Journal, 2 (1981), 272–74.Google Scholar

59 The Journal of John Wesley, ed. Curnock, N.(2 edn., London,1938), 2, p. 135. The circumlocution Wesley uses in two later cases (Ibid., 5, p. 195; 7, p. 132) suggests that these ex-Baptist candidates may never have received believers’ Baptism. ‘Mr. Wesley … maintained with jealousy his high-church professions, and kept at a suspicious distance from Dissenters’. D. Bogue and J. bennett. The History of the Dissenters from the Revolution to the year 1808 (2 edn., London, 1833), 2, p. 25.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., 2, pp. 48–9.

61 For a fuller treatment of the following see my two papers: ‘The Legacy of John Wesley: The Pastoral Office in Britain and America’ in Statesmen, Scholars and Merchants. Essays in Eighteenth-Century History presented to Dame Lucy Sutherland, eds A. Whiteman. J. S. Bromley and P. G. M. Dickson (Oxford, 1973), 323–50; and ‘Die Methodistische Kirchen’ forthcoming in the Theologische Realenzyclopaedie.

62 H. Spencer and E. Finch, The Constitutional Practice and Discipline of the Methodist Church (5 edn., London, 1969), pp. 289, 291.

63 On this see my paper on ‘The Renewed Unity of the Brethren. Ancient church, new sect, or interconfessional movement?’ in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester, 70 (1988), pp. 77–92. Part of the difficulty was that the old Bohemian Brethren had more than once been forced to improvise in life-and-death emergencies. See David Cranz, The Ancient and Modem History of the Brethren, tr. B. Latrobe (London, 1780), pp. 26–8. Cf. Primitive Church government… or the Unity of the Brethren in Bohemia (n. pi., 1703). The old Brethren held that the ministry was not one of the essentials of Christianity, but was necessary because it mediated the Word of God, held the keys, and dispensed the sacraments, all of which were essentials. Church constitutions of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, ed. and trans. B. Seifferth (London, 1866), pp. 102–3.

64 Luther’s Works, American edn. 53, p. 62. In the ‘forties Zinzendorf affirmed his Lutheran orthodoxy by getting the Brethren to receive the Confessio Augustana Invariata (Twentyone Discourses or Dissertations upon the Augsburg Confession, trans. Okeley, F. (London, 1753), pp. ii, xxix, 250–1Google Scholar) while admitting mat ‘a hierarchical state in the church was perhaps never absolutely necessary’. An account of the Doctrine, Manners, Liturgy and Ideas of the Unitas Fratrum. Presented to the House of Commons in 1749 (London, 1749), p. 66.

65 The Ancient ani Modern History of the Brethren, p. 196.

66 ‘The examination [which] followed [was conducted] not by die whole Ministerium in Stral sund, nor by the college of three pastors, but, since Zinzendorf must expect opposition in either case, by two pastors one of whom was the Superintendent’. Geschichte Jes Pietismus, 3, p. 276.

67 A good (and respectful) modern account of this episode is given by Beyreuther, E., Zinzendorf und die Christenheit (Marburg-an-der-Lahn, 1961), pp. 75–81 Google Scholar. See also Spangenberg, A. G., Leben des Herrn. Nicolaos Ludwig Grafen…von Zinzendorf (Baby, 1773-5), pp. 826–46:Google Scholar Cranz, Ancient and Modem History of the Brethren, pp. 177—9: Büdingische Sammlung (Büdingen, 1742—5), 3, pp. 670–7: J.G. Carpzov. Religions-untersuchungder Böhmisch-und Mährischen Brüder… (Leipzig, 1742), pp. 454–9: J. P. S. Winckler, DesHerm Grafen Ludwig von Zinzendorfs Unternehmungen in Religions-sachen (Leipzig, 1740), pp. 73–83, 95.

68 Büdingische Sammlung. Biographical footnote to vol. 1 Preface (no pagination).

69 Winckler, a Hallesian, found the Count’s professions of loyalty to the Lutheran Church hypocritical (Des Herm Crafen … von Zinzendorfs Untemehmungen, pp. 71–81). Certainly he made the curious promise to avoid the sham church in public. N. L. von Zinzendorf, Die Gegenwärtige Gestall des Kreuz-Reichs Jesu in seiner Unschuld … (Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1745), pp. 133–4.

70 A Manual of Doctrine [translated and published by James Hutton] (London, 1742), nos 113, 1140, 1179. Cf. Fabricius, Corpus Confessionum, 10, pp. 4, 32–3. Spangenberg came as close as he could to treating ordination as a sacrament (A. G. Spangenberg, Apologetische Schluss-Schrift (Leipzig/Gorlitz, 1752), pp. 427–8), but stressed that Moravian bishops, priests and deacons were all ‘under the conference of elders appointed by the synod, to whom the superintendency and counselling of the whole Unity is committed’ (A Concise Historical Account of the Present Constitution of the Unitas Fratrum …, trans. B. Latrobe (London, 1775), pp, 43, 46). In the next century Edmund de Schweinitz maintained that ‘episcopacy is essential to [the] existence’ of the Unity. The Moravian Episcopate (n. pi. or d.), p. 4.