plete succession from the beginning to his own time (1644); and this succession is reprinted in “Cranz’s Brueder Historie” (p. 91–99)—a book also several times cited by Perceval—and brought down, in accordance with Jablonsky’s letter of 1717 to Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury,[1] to the times of the present Church. The same succession is given by Gindely, in an Appendix to his “Quellen” (p. 450–453). The succession in the present Church is set forth by Plitt from the official records in the archives at Herrnhut; and the entire succession from 1467 to 1859 is printed in the Moravian Manual” (p. 129–133), embracing one hundred and sixty bishops, since which time six more have been consecrated.
That, finally, Perceval argues against the Moravian episcopacy from the circumstance that the newly created bishops of 1467, and their successors in the old Church, were generally called Seniors and not Bishops, will but provoke a smile; for himself declares that the title was rejected en account of the abuse of it among the adversaries. So far, therefore, from its “being hard to conceive that men should have been careful to preserve that, the name of which they shrank from owning” it is precisely what we would expect from a body of Christians protesting, with all the fire of their first love, not against the existence of bishops in the Roman Catholic and Calixtine churches, which was acknowledged to be an ancient and wise institution and hence adopted among themselves, but against the misuse of that holy office. Moreover the title of bishop (episcopus) is constantly employed in the Ratio Disciplinae, and in the voluminous Annotations with which Comenius has enriched that document, be disapproves of the position the fathers had in this respect occupied, pronouncing it to have been a needless scruple (Annotata ad Caput 1, Q, p. 71).
THE PRESERVATION OF THE EPISCOPATE.
When the Bohemian Anti-reformation had swept the Church of the Brethren from her original seats, she continued to exist, for some time longer, in Poland, where she had been previously
- ↑ Published in Pfaff’s Dissertatio de Successione Episcopali, 1721, under the title of De Successione Ordinis Episcopati in Unitate Fratrum Bohemorum. The substance of it is given in English, in the Acta Fratrum in Anglia, p. 112—115.
