Note 139 — SCHWENKFELDERS.
Reading edition
Hence we may infer that the Schwenkfelders forbade marriages with those not of their own persuasion. During the period of their troubles it seems that marriage by the church was at times refused them, no doubt from their refusing the sacrament. Maimed funeral rites were also among the persecutions of which they complained. In speaking thus of their decline, they may, however, overestimate their numbers in former times.
The following characteristic sketch may be introduced here nearly in the words of the original: The two pastors in Harpersdorf having been called to a new church, there came as pastor Herr John Samuel Neander (the pastor Neander who died in July 1759). He was by nature a very fiery man, so that he hardly knew how to govern his passions; by birth a Brandenburger, from Frankfort on the Oder. When he was installed, the Herr Superintendent in Liegnitz brought before him that he was a stranger, and therefore he might not know how it was in Harpersdorf, that there was a people there, who had already lived there about two hundred years, called Schwenkfelders. Therefore he would give him good advice, that he should leave these people in peace; preceding pastors had tried it enough, and had accomplished nothing by force. But if he thought he could not endure these people, he should say so, and another would be put into the place.
But Herr Neander promised everything good, and did not keep to it. For soon after entering upon his office he gave out that he had sworn to bury none of the Schwenkfelders as before practised, and this he began to carry out. See Erläuterung, chap. v.