Chapter II. Negotiations with the Trustees of Georgia.
The Schwenkfelders.
Among those who came to share the hospitalities of Count Zinzendorf
during the years immediately preceding the renewal of the Unitas Fratrum,
were a company of Schwenkfelders. Their sojourn on his estate
was comparatively brief, and their association with the Moravian Church
only temporary, but they are of interest because their necessities
led directly to the Moravian settlements in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
The Schwenkfelders took their name from Casper Schwenkfeld,
a Silesian nobleman contemporary with Luther, who had in the main
embraced the Reformer's doctrines, but formed some opinions of his own
in regard to the Lord's Supper, and one or two other points. His followers
were persecuted in turn by Lutherans and Jesuits, and in 1725 a number of them
threw themselves on the mercy of Count Zinzendorf. He permitted them
to stay for a while at Herrnhut, where their views served
to increase the confusion which prevailed prior to the revival of 1727,
about which time he moved them to Ober-Berthelsdorf.
In 1732, Zinzendorf's personal enemies accused him, before the Saxon Court,
of being a dangerous man, and the Austrian Government complained
that he was enticing its subjects to remove to his estates.
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