§ 170.1. Fanatics and Separatists in Germany.—Juliana von Asseburg, a young lady highly esteemed in Magdeburg for her piety, declared that from her seventh year she had visions and revelations, especially about the millennium. She found a zealous supporter in Dr. J. W. Petersen, superintendent of Lüneburg. After his marriage with Eleonore von Merlau, who had similar revelations, he proclaimed by word and writing a fantastic chiliasm and the restitution of all things. He was deposed in A.D. 1692, and died in A.D. 1727.513 Henry Horche, professor of theology at Herborn, was the originator of a similar movement in the Reformed church. He founded several Philadelphian societies (§ 163, 9) in Hesse, and composed a “mystical and prophetical bible,” the so called “Marburg Bible,” A.D. 1712. Of other fanatical preachers of that period one of the most prominent was Hochmann, a student of law expelled from Halle for his extravagances, a man of ability and eloquence, and highly esteemed by Tersteegen. Driven from place to place, he at last found refuge at Berleburg, and died there in A.D. 1721. In Württemberg the pious court chaplain, Hedinger, of Stuttgart, died A.D. 1703, was the father of pietism and separatism. The most famous of his followers were Gruber and Rock, who, driven from Württemberg, settled with other separatists at Wetterau, renouncing the use of the sacraments and public worship. Of those gathered together in the court of Count Casimir, the most eminent were Dr. Carl, his physician, the French mystic Marsay, and J. H. Haug, who had been expelled from Strassburg, a proficient in the oriental languages. They issued a great number of mystical works, chief of all the Berleburg Bible, in eight vols., 1726-1742, of which Haug was the principal author. Its exposition proceeded in accordance with the threefold sense; it vehemently contended against the church doctrine of justification, against the confessional writings, the clerical order, the dead church, etc. It showed occasionally profound insight, and made brilliant remarks, but contained also many trivialities and absurdities. The mysticism which is prominent in this work lacks originality, and is compiled from the mystico-theosophical writings of all ages from Origen down to Madame Guyon.

§ 170.2. The Inspired Societies in Wetterau.—After the unfortunate issue of the Camisard War in A.D. 1705 (§ 153, 4) the chief of the prophets of the Cevennes fled to England. They were at first well received, but were afterwards excommunicated and cast into prison. In A.D. 1711 several of them went to the Netherlands, and thence made their way into Germany. Three brothers, students at Halle, named Pott, adopted their notion of the gift of inspiration, and introduced it into Wetterau in A.D. 1714. Gruber and Rock, the leaders of the separatists there, were at first opposed to the doctrine, but were overpowered by the Spirit, and soon became its most enthusiastic champions. Prayer-meetings were organized, immense lovefeasts were held, and by itinerant brethren an ecclesia ambulatoria was set on foot, by which spiritual nourishment was brought to believers scattered over the land and the children of the prophets were gathered from all countries. The “utterances” given forth in ecstasy were calls to repentance, to prayer, to the imitation of Christ, revelations of the divine will in matters affecting the communities, proclamations of the near approach of the Divine judgment upon a depraved church and world, but without fanatical-sensual chiliasm. Also, except in the contempt of the sacraments, they held by the essentials of the church doctrine. In A.D. 1715 a split occurred between the true and the false among the inspired. The true maintained a formal constitution, and in A.D. 1716 excluded all who would not submit to that discipline. By A.D. 1719 only Rock claimed the gift of inspiration, and did so till his death in A.D. 1749. Gruber died in A.D. 1728, and with him a pillar of the society fell. Rock was the only remaining prop. A new era of their history begins with their intercourse with the Herrnhuters. Zinzendorf sent them a deputation in A.D. 1730, and paid them a visit in person at Berleberg [Berleburg]. Rock’s profound Christian personality made a deep impression upon him. But he was offended at their contempt of the sacraments, and at the convulsive character of their utterances. This, however, did not hinder him from expressing his reverence for their able leader, who in return visited Zinzendorf at Herrnhut in A.D. 1732. In the interests of his own society Zinzendorf shrank from identifying himself with those of Wetterau. Rock denounced him as a new Babylon-botcher, and he retaliated by calling Rock a false prophet. When the Herrnhuters were driven from Wetterau in A.D. 1750 (§ 168, 3, 7), the inspired communities entered on their inheritance. But with Rock’s death in A.D. 1749 prophecy had ceased among them. They sank more and more into insignificance, until the revival of spiritual life, A.D. 1816-1821, brought them into prominence again. Government interference drove most of them to America.

§ 170.3. Quite a peculiar importance belongs to J. C. Dippel, theologian, physician, alchemist, discoverer of Prussian blue and oleum dippelii, at first an orthodox opponent of pietism, then, through Gottfr. Arnold’s influence, an adherent of the pietists, and ultimately of the separatists. In A.D. 1697, under the name of Christianus Democritus, he began to write in a scoffing tone of all orthodox Christianity, with a strange blending of mysticism and rationalism, but without any trace profound Christian experience. Persecuted on every hand, exiled or imprisoned, he went hither and thither through Germany, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, and found a refuge at last at Berleberg [Berleburg] in A.D. 1729. Here he came in contact with the inspired, who did everything in their power to win him over; but he declared that he would rather give himself to the devil than to this Spirit of God. He was long intimate with Zinzendorf, but afterwards poured out upon him the bitterest abuse. He died in the count’s castle at Berleberg [Berleburg] in A.D. 1734.514

§ 170.4. Separatists of Immoral Tendency.—One of the worst was the Buttlar sect, founded by Eva von Buttlar, a native of Hesse, who had married a French refugee, lived gaily for ten years at the court of Eisenach, and then joined the pietists and became a rigid separatist. Separated from her husband, she associated with the licentiate Winter, and founded a Philadelphian society at Allendorf in A.D. 1702, where the foulest immoralities were practised. Eva herself was reverenced as the door of paradise, the new Jerusalem, the mother of all, Sophia come from heaven, the new Eve, and the incarnation of the Spirit. Winter was the incarnation of the Father, and their son Appenfeller the incarnation of the Son. They pronounced marriage sinful; sensual lusts must be slain in spiritual communion, then even carnal association is holy. Eva lived with all the men of the sect in the most shameless adultery. So did also the other women of the community. Expelled from Allendorf after a stay of six weeks, they sought unsuccessfully to gain a footing in various places. At Cologne they went over to the Catholic church. Their immoralities reached their climax at Lüde near Pyrmont. Winter was sentenced to death in A.D. 1706, but was let off with scourging. Eva escaped the same punishment by flight, and continued her evil practices unchecked for another year. She afterwards returned to Altona, where with her followers leading outwardly an honourable life, she attached herself to the Lutheran church, and died, honoured and esteemed, in A.D. 1717.—In a similar way arose in A.D. 1739 the Bordelum sect, founded at Bordelum by the licentiates Borsenius and Bär; and the Brüggeler sect, at Brüggeler in Canton Bern, where in A.D. 1748 the brothers Kohler gave themselves out as the two witnesses (Rev. xi.). Of a like nature too was the sect of Zionites at Ronsdorf in the Duchy of Berg. Elias Eller, a manufacturer at Elberfeld, excited by mystical writings, married in A.D. 1725 a rich old widow, but soon found more pleasure in a handsome young lady, Anna von Buchel, who by a nervous sympathetic infection was driven into prophetic ecstasy. She proclaimed the speedy arrival of the millennium; Eller identified her with the mother of the man-child (Rev. xii. 1). When his wife had pined away through jealousy and neglect and died, he married Buchel. The first child she bore him was a girl, and the second, a boy, soon died. When a strong opposition arose in Elberfeld against the sect, he, along with his followers, founded Ronsdorf, as a New Zion, in A.D. 1737. The colony obtained civil rights, and Eller was made burgomaster. Anna having died in A.D. 1744, Eller gave his colony a new mother, and practised every manner of deceit and tyranny. After the infatuation had lasted a long time, the eyes of the Reformed pastor Schleiermacher, grandfather of the famous theologian, were at last opened. By flight to the Netherlands he escaped the fate of another revolter, whom Eller persuaded the authorities at Düsseldorf to put to death as a sorcerer. Every complaint against himself was quashed by Eller’s bribery of the officials. After his death in A.D. 1750 his stepson continued this Zion game for a long time.

§ 170.5. Swedenborgianism.—Emanuel von Swedenborg was born at Stockholm, in A.D. 1688, son of the strict Lutheran bishop of West Gothland, Jasper Swedberg. He was appointed assessor of the School of Mines at Stockholm, and soon showed himself to be a man of encyclopædic information and of speculative ability. After long examination of the secrets of nature, in a condition of magnetic ecstasy, in which he thought that he had intercourse with spirits, sometimes in heaven, sometimes in hell, he became convinced, in A.D. 1743, that he was called by these revelations to restore corrupted Christianity by founding a church of the New Jerusalem as the finally perfected church. He published the apocalyptic revelations as a new gospel: “Arcana Cœlestia in Scr. s. Detecta,” in seven vols.; “Vera Chr. Rel.,” two vols. After his death, in A.D. 1772, his “Vera Christiana Religio” was translated into Swedish, but his views never got much hold in his native country. They spread more widely in England, where John Clowes, rector of St. John’s Church, Manchester, translated his writings, and himself wrote largely in their exposition and commendation. Separate congregations with their own ministers, and forms of worship, sprang up through England in A.D. 1788, and soon there were as many as fifty throughout the country. From England the New Church spread to America.—In Germany it was specially throughout Württemberg that it found adherents. There, in A.D. 1765, Oetinger (§ 171, 9) recognised Swedenborg’s revelations, and introduced many elements from them into his theosophical system.—Swedenborg’s religious system was speculative mysticism, with a physical basis and rationalizing results. The aim of religion with him is the opening of an intimate correspondence between the spiritual world and man, and giving an insight into the mystery of the connexion between the two. The Bible (excluding the apostolic epistles, as merely expository), pre-eminently the Apocalypse, is recognised by him as God’s word; to be studied, however, not in its literal but in its spiritual or inner sense. Of the church dogmas there is not one which he did not either set aside or rationalistically explain away. He denounces in the strongest terms the church doctrine of the Trinity. God is with him only one Person, who manifests Himself in three different forms: the Father is the principle of the manifesting God; the Son, the manifested form; the Spirit, the manifested activity. The purpose of the manifestation of Christ is the uniting of the human and Divine; redemption is nothing more than the combating and overcoming of the evil spirits. But angels and devils are spirits of dead men glorified and damned. He did not believe in a resurrection of the flesh, but maintained that the spiritual form of the body endures after death. The second coming of Christ will not be personal and visible, but spiritual through a revelation of the spiritual sense of Holy Scripture, and is realized by the founding of the church of the New Jerusalem.515

§ 170.6. New Baptist Sects (§ 163, 3).—In Wetterau about A.D. 1708 an anabaptist sect arose called Dippers, because they did not recognise infant baptism and insisted upon the complete immersion of adult believers. They appeared in Pennsylvania in A.D. 1719, and founded settlements in other states. Of the “perfect” they required absolute separation from all worldly practices and enjoyments and a simple, apostolic style of dress. To baptism and the Lord’s supper they added washing the feet and the fraternal kiss and anointing the sick. The Seventh-day Baptists observe the seventh instead of the first day of the week, and enjoin on the “perfect” celibacy and the community of goods. New sects from England continued to spread over America. Of these were the Seed or Sucker Baptists, who identified the non-elect with the seed of the serpent, and on account of their doctrine of predestination regarded all instruction and care of children useless. A similar predestinarian exaggeration is seen in the Hard-shell Baptists, who denounce all home and foreign missions as running counter to the Divine sovereignty. Many, sometimes called Campbellites from their founder, reject any party name, claiming to be simply Christians, and acknowledge only so much in Scripture as is expressly declared to be “the word of the Lord.” The Six-Principles-Baptists limit their creed to the six articles of Hebrews vi. 1, 2. The brothers Haldane, about the middle of the eighteenth century, founded in Scotland the Baptist sect of Haldanites, which has with great energy applied itself to the practical cultivation of the Christian life.—Continuation, §§ 208, 1; 211, 3.

§ 170.7. New Quaker Sects.—The Jumpers, who sprang up among the Methodists of Cornwall about A.D. 1760, are in principle closely allied to the early Quakers (§ 163, 4). They leaped and danced after the style of David before the ark and uttered inarticulate howls. They settled in America, where they have adherents still.—The Shakers originated from the prophets of the Cevennes who fled to England in A.D. 1705. They converted a Quaker family at Bolton in Lancashire named Wardley, and the community soon grew. In A.D. 1758 Anna Lee, wife of a farrier Stanley, joined the society, and, as the apocalyptic bride, inaugurated the millennium. She taught that the root of all sin was the relationship of the sexes. Maltreated by the mob, she emigrated to America, along with thirty companions, in A.D. 1774. Though persecuted here also, the sect increased and formed in the State of New York the Millennial Church or United Society of Believers. Anna died in A.D. 1784; but her prophets declared that she had merely laid aside the earthly garb and assumed the heavenly, so that only then the veneration of “Mother Anna” came into force. As Christ is the Son of the eternal Wisdom, Anna is the daughter; as Christ is the second Adam, she is the second Eve, and spiritual mother of believers as Christ is their father. Celibacy, community of goods, common labour (chiefly gardening), as a pleasure, not a burden, common domestic life as brothers and sisters, and constant intercourse with the spirit world, are the main points in her doctrine. By the addition of voluntary proselytes and the adoption of poor helpless children the sect has grown, till now it numbers 3,000 or 4,000 souls in eighteen villages. The capital is New Lebanon in the State of New York. The name Shakers was given them from the quivering motion of body in their solemn dances. In their services they march about singing “On to heaven we will be going,” “March heavenward, yea, victorious band,” etc. Like the Quakers (§ 163, 6) they have neither a ministry nor sacraments, and their whole manner of life is modelled on that of the Quakers. The purity of the relation of brothers and sisters has always been free from suspicion.516

§ 170.8. Predestinarian-Mystical Sects.—The Hebræans, founded by Verschoor, a licentiate of the Reformed church of Holland deposed under suspicion of Spinozist views, in the end of the seventeenth century, hold it indispensably necessary to read the word of God in the original. They were fatalists, and maintained that the elect could commit no sin. True faith consisted in believing this doctrine of their own sinlessness. About the same time sprang up the Hattemists, followers of Pontiaan von Hattem, a preacher deposed for heresy, with fatalistic views like the Hebræans, but with a strong vein of pantheistic mysticism. True piety consisted in the believer resting in God in a purely passive manner, and letting God alone care for him. The two sects united under the name of Hattemists, and continued to exist in Holland and Zealand till about A.D. 1760.