Hello, I'm Wilson Pruitt, and you are listening to the History of Methodism Podcast. You can support us online at patreon.com/historyofmethodism. Please rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. Today’s Episode: Herrnhut.
John Wesley did not become a bishop in the Moravian church. Wesley did not spread Moravian piety across the land. In 1740, a break will come between John Wesley and the Moravian church. The extracts from his journal which flesh out his European interlude, as described in our last episode, were published in order to explain Wesley’s split from the Moravians. Thus, we must read them knowing this bias is present. We also don’t have John’s diary from this time. As well, there are only a few letters that survive.
John only wrote two letters while at Herrnhut. The first was to Charles, where he tells his brother that he doesn’t have time to give a full account of the place and people “till we become face-to-face, when I hope we shall part no more.”1 The other letter was to James Hutton, the colleague with whom he stayed before leaving for Germany. It is filled with scriptural allusions but no personal details.
So the journal shall be our guide. Just because it is biased, that does not mean it is untruthful. The bias, in fact, can help us understand how vital Wesley saw this episode in his life to be.
The journal account not only has the day to day goings on, but includes numerous sermons, extracts, and personal histories. John doesn’t want us to simply take him at his word about the Moravians. We are to see and read and understand how Moravians thought of themselves.
When he arrives on August 1, 1738, the architecture is the first detail John records about Herrnhut. He writes:
It has one long street, through which the great road from Zittau to Löbau goes. Fronting the middle of this street is the orphan-house, in the lower part of which is the apothecary's shop, in the upper the chapel, capable of containing six or seven hundred people. Another row of houses runs at a small distance from either end of the orphan-house, which accordingly divides the rest of the town (beside the long street) into two squares. At the east end of it is the Count's house, a small, plain building, like the rest, having a large garden behind it, well laid out, not for show, but for the use of the community.
After passing through the ornate baroque palace in Dresden a few days prior, the simplicity of Herrnhut marks also the simplicity of the faith of the residents. Not simple as stupid, but simple as focused only on Christ.
John’s second day there is marked only by a love-feast of the married men of the community.
The following day, John attended a Bible conference (his words) with Gottfried Polycarp Müller, a learned scholar. The conference read the scriptures all in the original languages. It was at this meeting that John met Christian David, whose work and person would take up much of the Herrnhut account. John declares about David in his journal, “O may God make him a messenger of glad tidings.”
David was born in Moravia and trained as carpenter. He grew up Lutheran, then converted to Catholicism, then began the process to become Jewish, before a Protestant conversion. He began collaborating with Zinzendorf in 1722. John will include much of David’s autobiography in this account.
On Sunday, August 6, John and some others walk a mile to Berthelsdorf to attend the lutheran church there, it being the parish church for Herrnhut in that day and still today.
The interior design of the church is brought into focus by Wesley as he notes the painting of the last supper, the candle sticks, and the large brass Christ. We have more ornate decorations at this Lutheran Church that is still in distinction with the Moravian Brethren.
The next Tuesday, Wesley witnesses the funeral of a small child in the community. It is peaceful. The journal entry ends with an account from the boys father.
Seeing the father (a plain man, a tailor by trade) looking at the grave, I asked, "How do you find yourself?" He said, Praised be the Lord, never better. He has taken the soul of my child to himself. | have seen, according to my desire, his body committed to Holy Ground. And I know that when it is raised again, both he and I shall be ever with the Lord.'2
Two important details are mentioned soon after this account: the first is that John spent several evenings with one of the private bands. These were not mixed groups, but divided into choirs of folks, distinguished by age, sex, and marital status. This experience with the bands will be important upon John’s return to England.
The second detail concerns the four times he heard Christian David preaching. John goes into detail about every sermon, including writing down the majority of the fourth. The first sermon discusses people who are weak and faith. The second looks at Romans eight. The third discusses the state of the apostles after the death of Jesus, in the fourth covers the ground of faith. It is this sermon that John quotes at length and in which I will quote but an excerpt in order to give us a sense of why it mattered to John.
For this is the word: 'To him that believeth on God that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." See ye not that the foundation is nothing in us? There is no connection between God and the ungodly. There is no tie to unite them. They are altogether separate from each other. They have nothing in common. There is nothing less or more in the ungodly to join them to God. Works, righteousness, contrition? No. Ungodliness only. This then do, if you will lay a right foundation. Go straight to Christ with all your ungodliness. Tell him, Thou, whose eyes are as a flame of fire searching my heart, seest that I am ungodly. I plead nothing else. I do not say I am humble or contrite; but I am ungodly. Therefore bring me to him that justifieth the ungodly. Let thy blood be the propitiation for me. For there is nothing in me but ungodliness.
Here is a mystery. Here the wise men of the world are lost, are taken in their own craftiness. This the learned of the world cannot comprehend. It is foolishness unto them: sin is the only thing which divides men from God. Sin (let him that heareth understand) is the only thing which unites them to God, i.e. the only thing which moves the Lamb of God to have compassion upon, and by his blood to give them access to the Father.3
It is here that John Wesley’s chronology becomes dysfunctional. He mentions how on Monday, August 14, he was constrained to take his leave of the place. John writes: “O when shall THIS Christianity cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea!”4
Then, John goes back in time to August 10th in order to give space for Christian David’s autobiography. Beyond the content of David’s life, Wesley’s inclusion of it here marks a turning point in his career around the use of biography. His first published journal, covering 1732-1738, was printed around 1738-1739. That is, sometime after John’s return from the continent. The contents of the first journal focus on the rise of Methodism and John’s trip to Georgia and back. It is very John centric. There are other important figures and letters, but their stories are not foregrounded. The second Journal, which covers February of 1738 through August 14, was published in 1740, and relays not only John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience, but his first inclusion of the spiritual biographies of others for the edification of the church.
As mentioned above, David was a unique figure, a traveling carpenter who moved from Catholic to Jewish to Moravian and was an early confrere of Zinzendorf. In a future bonus episode, I will include the whole of David’s account that Wesley publishes. For now I will include the conclusion
At my return to Herrnhut I found it difficult at first to make my brethren sensible of this, or to persuade them not to insist on the assurance of faith as a necessary qualification for receiving the Lord's Supper. But from the time they were convinced, which is now three years since, we have all chiefly insisted on Christ 'given for us'! This we urge as the principal thing, which if we rightly believe, Christ will surely be 'formed in us'. And this preaching we have always found to be accompanied with power, and to have the blessing of God following it. By this believers receive a steady purpose of heart, and a more unshaken resolution to endure with a free and cheerful spirit whatsoever our Lord is pleased to lay upon them.5
John also includes nine other spiritual biographies of other Moravians. Throughout his publishing career, Wesley will share dozens of holy lives with the people called Methodist in order to encourage them and offer models of Christian living, but he started here with the holy people of Herrnhut. It should be noted that he only gives accounts of men, most likely because those were the only people with which he conversed at length. Herrnhut was rigidly divided among gender and marital status, and less than a year after his turmoil with Sophy Hopkey in Georgia, John is not looking to rock the boat.
John ends his second published journal with a description first of the way of life of Herrnhut, and second with an extract of the constitution of the body of the Moravian Brethren. There is no concluding statement. Instead, Wesley offers the account plainly to show both a type of Christianity, as well as ways in which he and his movement (already blossoming in 1740) are distinct.
In a lasting sense, the visit to Herrnhut offered Wesley a chance to see how Christians could live in the world. This vision remained with him throughout his career.
In the 1760s, Wesley published A Short History of the People called Methodists. It was a response to a church history published in 1765 that Wesley enjoyed, but which also called him a heretic. Wesley published the short history as a corrective. Here is how John described his trip to Germany.
In summer I took a journey into Germany, and spent some time at Herrnhut,'' a little town where several Moravian families were settled. I doubt such another town is not to be found upon the earth. I believe there was no one therein, young or old, who s did not fear God and work righteousness. I was exceedingly comforted and strengthened by the conversation of this lovely people, and returned to England more fully determined to spend my life in testifying the gospel of the grace of God.6
Revival doesn’t spark in England at John Wesley’s return, but the seeds are there. Before we go back to England, there is a central figure of Wesley’s life whom we need to introduce. Much of the inspiration for the coming revival came not from a Moravian or even an Anglican, but a reformed preacher in the colonies: Jonathan Edwards. Who was Edwards, and how did his account of a revival impact John Wesley, next time on the History of Methodism.