tion), as our chief in our Confession of Faith, as our leader in Christian living, and as the guide of our youth. Thereby we attested that his qualification for these duties was recognized. And having (in accordance with his judgment, and after consultation with his conscience and long agonizing before God) arranged a plan for religious services and an order of worship, and having manifested therewith such a zeal for God that certain signs and indications appeared of the correctness of such a course, the direct course to salvation through penitence; namely, a full apprehension and mortification of our depravity, in true humility, sorrow and prayer; self-sacrifice and surrender to the will of God, and the daily renewal of these things; the zealous practice of Scriptural discipline, with daily supplication for the unlocking of the divine mysteries and for grace for the mending and renewing of our lives, under the direction of the Scriptureshaving conducted such a ministry for four years, with a true passion for God and the salvation of men, during the last year his strength failed appreciably, and a subsequent illness warned him of his approaching end. But in spite of his frailty he continued zealous, in as far as this was at all possible, up to a week before his death, when he became confined to his bed. His illness was chiefly of the nature of exhaustion, with some pleurisy (it was said to be gastric fever). He had no desire for food and suffered intense pains in the abdomen. And thus on the eleventh of March, 1740, in full possession of his faculties and in the fifty-third year of his age, he was called away, and his body was conveyed to its interment. He is buried at Schippach on a plot of ground belonging to George Yeakel."
The relation which George Weiss sustains to the hymnody of the Schwenkfelders is three-fold: First, as a writer of hymns; second, as a reviser of hymns; and third, as a transcriber and compiler. Of his activity as a hymn writer, barely an outline can be given here; to wit, (i) "Gesange uber die Evangelia" (1709)—metrical versions of the "Gospel Lessons" for the entire ecclesiastical year; (2) "Meditationes" (ca. 1724 — 30),[1] being sev-
- ↑ Each proper name treated is given in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and German. Then follow the references containing the Biblical account of the character under consideration. Then the "Meditatio" in the form of a hymn.
