book.[1] Another service performed by Christopher Hoffmann was the preservation, already noted, of many exegeses of hymns made by his father, Balthaser Hoffmann. Again, the manuscript appendix which many copies of the Saur edition contain, is his work. Following is the description of the hymn-book of 1760, written on a fly-leaf of the volume by its owner, Former Governor S. W. Pennypacker:[2]
"This hymn-book of the Schwenckfelders, which may be said to represent the art of the Middle Ages, extended into the 18th Century and across the Atlanticis the best specimen of their manuscripts known to those familiar with the subject. It was written between 1758 and 1760 in Penna. and was bound here and the clasps and mountings were made here. Christoph Hoffman, who wrote it, came to Penna. at six years of age, so that his art was learned here. It is therefore, except as to the literature, purely a Penna. production. Hoffman was born in 1728 and died Jany. 29, 1804, so that when he undertook this task he was thirty years of age. He was a Schwenckf elder minister.
"An account of the origin of this collection of hymns with a series of biographical sketches of the authors is given in the preface. The initials of the authors are written beside the hymns and are explained in the preface. Aurelius Prudentius, a pious Spaniard about A. D. 400, wrote a number of hymns in Latin, which were translated into German by Adam Reissner. This and the hymn book of the Picards or Bohemian Brethren, which was translated by Michael Weiss in 1531 and increased and corrected by Johan Horn, constituted the earliest and principal sources. Selections were also made from the hymns written by the Schwenckfelders Adam Reissner, Reimund Wecker, George Frell, Daniel Sudermann, Antonius Oelsner, George Heydrick, Martin John and others, and by some of the Lutherans and Reformed.
"Caspar Weiss, born at Deutmansdorf in Silesia, and who married Anna, daughter of George Anders, made the collection in 1709 for the use of his family and it was afterward adopted by the church. George Weiss, his son, born 1687 at Harpersdorf in Si-
