that Camerarius drew his information chiefly from Blahoslav and Lasitius:”[1] third, that Blahoslav, whose very words we have adduced, and Lasitius, as quoted by Plitt, both positively declare that the deputies of the Brethren were conseerated Bishops by the Waldensian Bishops. Consequently the conclusion is self-evident, that Camerarius falsified history.
He did not give an account, as Perceval for want of better knowledge would have us believe, drawn from histories and documents earlier than those which Comenius and Regenvolscius had, and disproving their narrative, but with precisely the same “earlier histories and documents” before him that guided them, be changed the truth, whereas they faithfully reproduced it.
Nor is it difficult to divine the motives by which he was actuated. Camerarius wrote from the standpoint of the German Reformers, who rejected episcopacy. He was a warm friend and admirer of er me the Brethren, but this feature of their ecclesiastical constitution so neither accorded with his views nor presented itself to his mind as important. It would rather, he thought, tend to awaken mistrust among his fellow-Reformers, to whom he was anxious to commend the Brethren. For these reasons, which he deemed to be sufficient, he laid aside, in this instance, the exalted character of an honest historian. Is it surprising that, under such circumstances, his work remained in manuscript for thirty years after his death, and was at last published, not by the Brethren, but by his own grandson?
The conflicting testimony of Joachim Camerarius is, therefore, proven to be wholly without weight, a mere idiosyncratic whim.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAVIAN EPISCOPACY.
Having critically investigated the origin and validity of the Moravian Episcopacy, it yet remains for us to consider its development and preservation, and the transfer of the succession to the present Church.
After the return of the newly consecrated Bishops from the Waldenses, a second Synod was held at Lhota, in the midst of which the three candidates for the ministry, designated by lot on the
- ↑ Ibid. p. 137.
