Page:De Schweinitz - The Moravian episcopate (1865).pdf/26

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
24
THE MORAVIAN EPISCOPATE.

established, and where a number of the exiled ministers now sought refuge. These, in conjunction with their Polish brethren, held a Synod at Lissa, in 1632. The victories which Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of Protestantism, was gaining, filled them with the confident hope of a speedy restoration to their native land, and suggested the idea of perpetuating the Bohemian-Moravian line of Bishops. One representative of it. Bishop Gregory Erastus, was still living, while the Polish succession was vested in Bishops Daniel Micolajevius and Paul Paliurus. These three, accordingly, consecrated Laurentius Justinus, Matthias Procopius, and John Amos Comenius, for Bohemia and Moravia, as also Paul Fabricius for Poland. In the following year (1633), Paul Paliurus having died, Martin Orminius and John Rybinius received consecration at Ostrorog; and eleven years afterward (1644)—Gregory Erastus, Daniel Miculajevius and Matthias Procopius being no more—Martin Gertichius and John Byttner, at Lissa. Twenty-two years passed away, and the only Bishops that remained were John Amos Comenius, an exile in Holland, and John Byttner, in Poland. The sanguine anticipations of the Brethren had not been fulfilled; the Thirty Years’ War had left Behemia and Moravia under the heel of the Austrian oppressor. But still they hoped against hope, and by the advice and with the episcopal concurrence of the now venerable Comenius given in writing, in as much as the infirmities of old age prevented him from being present, Bishop John Byttner, at a Synod held at Mielencin, (1662), consecrated Nicholas Gertichius and Peter Jablonsky, that the succession might not be lost. But the latter died January 12th, 1670—in which year Comenius was also gathered to his fathers, and Nicholas Gertichius, May 24th, 1671. Thereupon, although the scattered Brethren had greatly decreased, and the Polish branch of the Church was being absorbed by the Reformed, John Byttner, the sole surviving Bishop, still anxious to preserve the episcopate in the event of a future resuscitation, and mindful, in particular, of the prophetical hope: of Comenius, consecrated Adam Samuel Hartman, on the 28th of October, 1673, at Lissa. Byttner dying soon after, and on his death-bed designating John Zugehoer as the next bearer of the succession, he was consecrated, in the presence of a number of his brethren, by Bishop Hartman, on the 13th of August, 1076, in the Church of St. Peter and Paul, at Danzig.