Introduction to the Commission, Complaint and Answer of Jacob Reiff

Introduction to the Commission, Complaint and Answer of Jacob Reiff

 Freedom of association,  congregationalism, religious freedom, not authority, created the independent congregations who engaged preachers "for the year, like cowherds in Germany" (Gottlieb  Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania, 47): "When any one fails to please his congregation, he is given notice." Mittelberger did not see the silver lining, "liberty in Pennsylvania does more harm than good to many people" (48). "Excessive freedom," he calls it famously, "heaven for farmers, paradise for artisans and hell for officials and preachers" (48). This freedom was an extension of Penn's vision for Pennsylvania, and a desire for it underlies the Jacob Reiff controversy.

Authority most often says the opposite of what it means.The unofficial history of the German Reformed Church claims "their concerns were pragmatic. They did not bring pastors with them." But they were totally unpragmatic. According to their own laws they could not baptize or celebrate communion without ordained leaders. Teachers, or readers without ordination had to step in to serve this need: "because these men called Readers were not ordained ministers, the settlers could not have their children baptized nor partake of Holy Communion" (History of Bethany United Church of Christ, Ephrata, Pennsylvania, 1730-1976).

 This deception continue in the modern authority: "they realized that they were sheep without a shepherd. Having come to Pennsylvania for religious freedom but finding no place to worship God, they would gather in houses, barns or groves and select a man who could read well to read sermons and prayers."   But the Reformed did not emigrate for religious freedom. As Frederick S. Weiser observes: "Reformed and Lutheran, along with the Roman Catholics, were the only legally recognized churches in Germanic lands. Mennonites and other Anabaptists existed in hiding and defiance of the law. But it is important to note regarding the Pennsylvania migration that whereas almost all the Anabaptists left Europe, the Lutheran and Reformed emigration was not undertaken for religious reasons or because of persecution...but for opportunity" (Pennsylvania German Fraktur, xx).

In Bern, Zurich and in the Palatinate the Reformed were the state church. Mennonites in Pennsylvania had been oppressed for two centuries by those authorities in Germany, Holland, Switzerland. The Reformed establishment executed Mennonites. If you held "pernicious views in regard to the sacraments" you could be drowned in a bag (Bloody Theatre, 485). "King Ferdinand declared drowning (called the third baptism) "the best antidote to Anabaptism". Persecutions followed Anabaptists to Holland and the Low Countries. Mennonites migrated to the Ukraine, children of whom in the 1800's emigrated to the Midwest to be visited in Nebraska by Bishop Andrew Mack. The United Church (UCC) today is that Reformed church of old continued, but nobody wants to take credit for their doctrines of blood. If the Reformed were fleeing the so-called Palatinate "oppression and poverty" they were fleeing themselves. Thousands of people were executed for being rebaptised. Baptize your baby or die. Rebaptize your baby and you die. Hierarchy vs. democracy was so embarrassing that later denominations hid their complicity. It was the Anabaptists who wanted freedom and escaped to find it.

Reformed clergy that settled in Philadelphia thought itself superior to the supposed ignorant lay pastors of the Mennonites. Mennonite leaders were "uneducated." This is also charged against Jacob Reiff. The  top down Rformed hierarchy contradicted emerging democratic Pennsylvania. Mennonites ordained by lot, not seminary. Early Reformed generations were forced into something like this, had to create leadership.  "Readers," unordained in the case of the Skippack church and others, were drafted. John Philip Boehm preached and performed the sacraments from 1725 until September 1727 when a colony of Reformed settlers brought as their religious head the first legitimate church official, Rev. George Michael Weiss. Before Weiss' arrival the only means of grace at Skippack had been school teacher and Reader Boehm.  The day Weiss landed practically, he systemically routed Boehm from every church.

Pennsylvania was famous for its enthusiasms Weiss was only the instrumental cause of division of church order.. Conrad Weiser and Conrad Beissel burned the Heidelberg Catechism as the sometime agency of death along with Reformed governance. Judges of those duly constituted old world councils made clear to Mennonites how free they were to disagree. Believe or die. Shadows of this are everywhere in Weiss' contentiousness. The German Reformed Church in Pennsylvania derived its ideas c. 1725 from Zwingli and Calvin two centuries before. It eventually became the Evangelical and Reformed Church, merged with the Congregational Christian Churches, then merged again and became the United Church (UCC) in 1957.

Ch. 2: Pennsylvania Spiritual Lawlessness

Baptisms

The brightest star in this stellium of mystic artists pretending to the prophetic was Conrad Beissel. The illuminations of books and prints of the utopian society at Ephrata were a century before  Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance (1852) or Brook Farm (1841-47). New England got all the press but the real transcendentalists were in Pennsylvania. Beissel was just hitting his stride in 1741, but, as will happen with the individual and the prophetic, the isolation of his mentality and individuality was extreme. At one time he attempted to baptize himselfto baptize himself which is as hard as marrying yourself, which he also tried to do. Anointing yourself is more common and just as prideful.  Of the baptism, "this questionable act, however, failed to convince him...yet he considered his old master [Peter Becker]...so far beneath him... that it would be too great a humiliation for his proud spirit to receive baptism at their hands." (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 102).  In the revival on the Pequea (1724) he compared himself with Jesus, "even Christ had humbled himself to be baptized by so lowly a person as John" (103). Then he was immersed face forward three times. When one changed religions there was a giving of "a bill of divorce to their former spiritual wife" (51). "There were few under the leading of the Superintendent who were not rebaptized at least three times, according as their zeal for God demanded (51). The social relationships in these communities were as difficult as New England's. Hawthorne quit Brook farm over its nastiness in 1841.

Julius Friedrich Sachse (1842-1919), Beissel's biographer, another Rosicrucian, empathizes with Beissel in November 1724 as he "plunges beneath the flood, and through it again enter[s] the material world cleansed from all taint and sin...yet his pride forbade him to humble himself, as he considered, to bow to his old master [Peter Becker] and receive the rite at his hands" (103). Submission is the opposite of lawlessness but pride isn't.These exaggerations were a style of writing of the 18th century (compare Sterne or Defoe) and they match the pride of the celebrant himself, for that cleansing from all taint, if it had any effect at all (and if it did we should all instantly baptize the world) it lasted only so long as it had to be redone, and redone, so was no cleansing at all. Before this their adversaries had taunted the Baptists who needed a second baptism with a third, drowning, but that is another course entirely. All must be done to further imitation "apostolicwise," Sachse says. "Apostles" appeared in Pennsylvania as much as they did in latter day Scottsdale pyramid schemes, what they call affinity frauds. Aposticity went with autocracy down to the Pequea where he went "face forward, under the cold flood." Sachse says that "this baptism in the Pequea was the most noteworthy one in the history of the sect-people of Pennsylvania" (The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania I, 104).

But not so fast. Four years later Beissel renounced this baptism lest there seem to be any taint on his authority from having been immersed by a group he now severed (Becker's baptists). It puts a whole new meaning on Anabaptist. Beissel rebaptized again, went back down to the river and got re-baptized twice. By any proper count we are now at four, not counting those congregants baptized in muddy water who had to rewash. First he was unbaptised backwards to wash off the former (at the hands of Becker). He went back under three times backwards. This was done to an accompaniment of Rosicrucian fours and sevens that Sachse comprehends, that the underground cities of the future will practice in thirds. Then Beissel,  being unbaptized on his back, flipped over on his face and went down forward thrice. Backwards means face up in renunciation and frontwards means face down in restoration. In 1738 Beissel enacted baptisms in and for the dead, (Chronicon, 122) wherein the son of Alexander Mack was baptized in his father's stead to qualify him for Celestial Virginity. These incongruities  were common. They just could not leave baptism alone. In his polemic against Beissel Christopher Sauer says, "I have, without baptizing myself and letting myself be baptized four times (like him) (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 344). Anabaptists again and again took the waters. They rebaptised as rededication, as repentance and as a show of solidarity until in 1745 repeated baptism was joined with hair cutting. The whole sisterhood was rebaptized as were ten at one time, fourteen at another, all performed by Beissel, who "purposed it be a yearly custom" (Chronicon, 192). This occurred after the trying period when the Eckerlins had left, accused of "church-robbery" (190).

Sabbath Celibacy

Many extremities were summoned to defend Beissel's notion of the Sabbath. The long title of his Mystyrion is the "Lawless ANTICHRIST discover'd and Disclos'd, Shewing that all those do belong to that Lawless Antichrist, who willfully reject the Commandments of God, amongst which, is his holy, and by himself blessed Seventh-Day Sabbath."  A law of opposites prevailed in his writing, a code where bride means whore, and rest means turmoil. So the preface to the reader of Mystery of the Lawless invests in Beissel's own word an editorial "we," dozens of times in two pages. His proof of truth is that it must first be spoken before it is written, that is, by himself. That makes it apostolic, "the Whore and her Cup," "explain the Words of God after her crooked Serpentine Will." So it was necessary to "withdraw with all his Heart and whole Mind from all Vanity, and Love of Creatures, and from all Worldly and carnal or fleshly Desire." "Denying the world," was always a favorite topic of the Sanctifieds, except that the whole of Pennsylvania art celebrated the world its religion forswore, if you count the thousand domestic details of their Jerusalem in Eden fraktur and furniture. It's almost as if "the Whore together with the Antichrist" was the facetious Beissel himself.

Baptism and the Sabbath were crucial in 1728 and 29 when Beissel's confederate Michael Wohlfarth insisted on his own inspired authority in Philadelphia, "I have a message to you from the Lord" (Sachse, 150) and exchanged broadsides with opponents. Wohlfarth and Beissel found themselves on the court house steps of Philadelphia arguing about the days of the week (154). The odd thing of this mix of genius and idiocy is that while Beissel was proclaiming himself sultan of the left wing, introverting sexuality, baptizing again and again, he was early associated with Ben  Franklin, his printer, the Mason, and had begun to coin the atonal music of his later community that fostered decorative art to the nth degree. All this is more or less simultaneous with Beissel's second theosophical work in print, and first with Franklin (c. 1729), 32 pages, of which the 99 maxims printed were, as Sachse unhelpfully explains, "the figure 1 stands for the finite or man, while the 0 represents the infinite, and to make the number 100 would have been to place the finite before the infinite" (162). We can't have that.

These NINETY NINE MYSTICAL SENTENCES exist translated by Peter Miller (1768), part issued by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1912. So Beissel in quick succession in two years published four books, the Mystery of Lawlessness, 99 Sayings, a hymnbook of 62 hymns, 31 of his own, Gottliche Liebes (Franklin, 1730) and a work on Matrimony, Ehebuchlein (Franklin 1730) in addition to Wohlfarth's Seventh-Day-Sabbath (1729). These points of contention would occupy him the rest of his years: baptism, the Sabbath, wisdom, hymns and music, celibacy. Beissel kept publishing prolific editions of his hymnbooks in 1730, 32, 34 (ms. edition) and 36, with Franklin, most of the hymns written by Beissel. He was a propaganda machine. The First Century of German Language Printing attributes eight of the twelve known printed works in the colony before 1738 to Beissel and Wohlfarth (2) , the Mystery of Lawlessness, German and English editions of 1728, 29, the Ninety-nine Mystical Sentences of 1729-30, a book on marriage as the penitentiary of man, Ehebuchlein...Menschen of 1730 and the hymn books. His  community built houses for neighbors and held theater when they marched the road.

This Ephrata community pretended to a large family, but under the surface it was more like a gang. How to explain celibacy's extremities? A prejudice against life? You can see it in theosophy in the cycle of death and rebirth. One life is never enough for Those dying generations at their song, as Yeats, dying generations, entropy, life is never sufficient. Celibacy, tantraism, magic rituals, incantations, death, rebirth are drugs that oppose existence of itself. This negativity was so strong it cast itself as positive and maligned the negative as the positive. This negativity unleashed huge creativity, push a thing down here and won't it come up there? Polarized or natural? We are unable to think clearly when the poles are reversed! Commonplace phrases of  esoteric teachings increase the reversal: rites, secret rituals, mystic theosophists, altars, fires, esoteric speculations, Celestial Eve, heavenly virgin, spiritual virgin, celestial virgin, virgin Sophia, mixed with the mystic, dogmas, awakening, simplicity,  revival. All you need do to attract a following is tie up a sack and call it love. But the negative joined to its opposite is still negative, so if St. Paul had an agapetae, meaning a live-in snuggle bunny, the real version of which might be David's girl who warmed him on his deathbed, but there will be some priest who will give him a bastard, and some critic to write about it. The root of negativity is to usurp authority to create authority. The one thing none of this bears is the thought that all human relation, every act, every thought, each moment is infused with redemption, so no matter what you have done, thought or said, there is redemption for it.

Even if Beissels's tract against marriage has no known copy there is plenty of evidence of his view. About 1735 he was awakened in his hut by intruders who whipped him for seducing one of the Reformed wives, presumably seeking her virginity with him (Sectarians, 254). All opposites! Along with chastity came mortifying the flesh, full beards, pilgrim costume with the implicit violence of that garb. Whether to be a full hermit or merely a monastic seemed the Hegelian choice in their minds. Of the immediate temptations in this holy melancholy we have only Buñuel to spank, and he wasn't there. To borrow from conspiracy theory, the processes of control through sexual repression are mesmerist, patterning and depatterning, inversion techniques, hypno-illusions, etc., and even if we question the applications in politics, the techniques are seen in the Pennsylvania communes.

 "The tail of a comet portended switches with which God would lash and judge them with great "calamities (417), compelling Beissel to issue Mystische Abhandlung uberdie Schopfung und vondes Menschen Fall (1745), A Dissertation on Mans Fall, Englished in 1765 (433) which Peter Miller (Agrippa) said "has gone further than even the holy Apostles in their revelations" (422). No wonder Christopher Sauer says, but not in devotion, "this one must be regarded as a God" which he calls "spiritual harlotry and idolatry" (343, 44) in regard to Beissel's hymn to himself (Hymn 400 in the collection Sauer printed for Ephrata in 1739, Zionitic Incense Hill, (Zionitischer Weyrauchs Hugel (320). But of course in this god-awakened soul that word awakened, being the favorite of them all, had several meanings. Peter Miller in the Ephrata             Chronicon claims that Beissel can render himself invisible, "the spirit under whose guidance he was, at times made him invisible" (332).

The entrance to the doorway of the Ephrata chapel was so low as to force the entrant to bow (404). Iron was prohibited in their building because it was unholy in the Temple, as Sachse says in reference to Nebuchadnezzar's dream, "that even in Babylon iron was known as the symbol of destruction" (402), but while iron may have been destructive it was not deceitful. When it served them to spurn Babylon they did, but when it suited them they would confirm their learning with Rosicrucian Egyptian-Babylonian ritual. Even while surrendering their so called "Babylonian names given them by their parents at baptism, they substituted new spiritual names" (305) embracing Babylon at every turn, admitting Eckerling (Onesimus), Miller (Jaebez) and Weiser (Enoch) to the grandiose Order of Melchizedek (386). It was a new/old testament Babylon Talmud/Gospel. The Zionitic Brotherhood at Ephrata could in as little as 40 days so completely physically and spiritually rehabilitate someone as to lengthen their years to 5557 in perfect health and contentment. The initiate restored to the state of perfect innocence of Adam was reborn by fasting, chanting, and drugs, a perfect Castaneda of the 18th century (361f). The good news for historians is that these elites, living so long, must still be alive to be interviewed. Of course they are yet in their infancy, so bring a bottle to their meeting. So incompatible with rational discourse, the underlying purpose of these efforts, as reported by Sachse of Johann Frantz Reguier, was the good Pennsylvania quest that "by a strict life and bodily denial one may grow and increase in sanctification" (362). And when the self-administered treatment failed and he had some time later regained his senses, Reguier went off "on July 15, 1735…for Georgia in the hope of meeting Count Zinzendorf and through him learning the way to perfection and sanctification' (quoted by Sachse, 364). "The fortunate adept who had thus successfully completed the ordeal, with physical body as clean and pure as than of a new-born child, his spirit filled with divine light, with vision without limit, and with mental powers unbounded…should finally be able to say to himself, I AM, THAT I AM." But we know all this. What Van de Wetering says of the Zen Buddhists is said of every human spiritual master; then you deed him your home and your estate. They will give you a reading. I am not going.



 Sachse says they aped the monastic customs of the Middle Ages in night vigils, tonsures, regalia, priesthoods (375) and mystical theology that included baptism for the dead, even more primitive than reincarnation, the most absurd instance being the creation of "immunity for deceased or absent kinfolk" (366) gained by the outer faith. It's all about the outer. Look who has entered the human plane, they will tell you. So medieval was this high calling and self esteem that Beissel was forced to adopt the office of Vater instead of merely Brother, a title "too commonplace" (367). These orders, rituals and hierarchies of law and outer ceremony were just opposite of the Oley Newborn who were so totally dominated by inner vision, but yet the impetus to egotism and domination were the same. Signs, countersigns and mystics, how embarrassed was Yeats when he practiced the rituals of the Golden Dawn?

Zinzendorf

Denial  of sexuality in Beissel and promotion of sexuality in Zinzendorf had opposite programs as kinds of perversion. Enforcing their own anti-laws, their supercharged terms for sexual denial and promotion were similar if opposite. The productivity of their efforts is measured by their autocracy and amazing released energy, which should not necessarily seem a product of sublimation. There were many of these mystics. The meditations of Zinzendorf riding horseback to take the gospel to the Indians may resemble the meditations of Crashaw and Donne, but Zinzendorf, like Beissel, is a consumed megalomaniac. His mysticism is tantrism, his community autocracy. Pennsylvania is more than toy statistics in the bathtub however. Christopher Sauer's wife went one snowy night to become the spiritual bride of Conrad Beissel at Ephrata. Alexander Mack, called Brother Timotheus at Ephrata (Sectarians, 88) got baptized for his godly father founder of the Baptists (after his death!).  Conrad Weiser (1696-1760) bounced from Lutheran to Beissel to Zinzendorf and back to Muhlenberg after burning all his prayer books. The New Mooners of Pennsylvania, played trombones at the new moon in the wilderness, holding that prayer ascended in the waxing but descended in the waning moon as did deceased souls (Sectarians, 431). 
 
 "The most extensive use of drawing Lots in the Pietist tradition may have been Count von Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren of Herrnhut who drew lots for many purposes, including selection of church sites, approval of missionaries, the election of bishops and many others. This practice was greatly curtailed after the General Synod of the worldwide Moravian Unity in 1818 and finally discontinued in the 1880s." Cleromancy


The words of Beissel and Zinzendorf had a bite. They could not mutually humble themselves enough even to meet in the flesh. Beissel, who "regarded himself as of a higher rank in the theosophical fraternity, considered it against his dignity to call on Zinzendorf (Sachse, 448), who responded by letter to Beissel that he "should descend from his spiritual height that others might sit alongside of him without danger to their lives" (449). This pearl comes from the same Zinzendorf who threatened to kill Weiser. The two are paired. Both loved secret orders, paraphernalia of medals, robes, rituals and the power to command others. The Moravians had the Order of the Mustard Seed and the Order of the Passion of  Jesus (Sachse 4548f). Both were social visionaries. Zinzendorf held seven ecumenical conferences to found "one congregation of God in the Spirit" (442). Throughout these things their words about Christ and love are enticing to the extreme, but the liberty and love they spoke were completely opposite their autocratic practice of the Bethlehem and Ephrata communities (435).

If it is a mystery how Blake yokes such disparates in his visionary poems, speaking at the same time primitive biblical devotional language over an allegorical remake of the nature of man, describing his Fall in mysterious quaternaries, he is just another lovable case of 18th century mind whom renaissance cabala remarried to a pietistic lifestyle. Were there such extremes in England that turned up in Penn's Woods with the renaissance pictographs of the spiritual bride? Blake got it from Swedenborg. Swedenborg got it from Zinzendorf. In the greater context it is urged that

"In l743 the names "Mr. and Mrs. Blake" appeared on the register of the Fetter Lane Society, at a time when seventy-two members formed "The Congregation of the Lamb. The Blake couple were perhaps Willam's grandparents, for James Blake (his father) married a widow, Catherine Armit

age, in l752 [9]. Catherine's maiden name was Wright, anda Mr. Wright (her father?) was included among the married men in the l743 register. According to the early Blake facsimilist William Muir they "attended the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane." [10]...Of greatest relevance of Blake's radical sexual beliefs is the fact that his family was allegedly associated with the Moravians during the turbulent "Sifting Period"a series of experiments in social egalitarianism, magical practices, and

sexual antinomianism. Count Nicolas Ludwig Zinzendorf, the chief of the "United Brotherhood," was determined to act out the Kabbalistic theories of earthly and heavenly copulation that he had learned...." Schuchard, Why Mrs. Blake

Whatever the practices urged on these Pennsylvanians and Blake get taken as a whole they lead to madness, which you could conceive from the prevention of climax to provoke greater consciousness. They call them antinomian spiritual practices of the mystical marriage of the mind, visualizing Hebrew letters with the breath, orgasmic trance, heavenly sex, " brain corticals, lung rhythms, abdominal muscles, and seminal ducts" all this while controlling evil thoughts and manipulating the cremaster muscle such as it was for Swedenborg who had mistresses throughout Europe.

Thus the teachings of "the occult philosophy of the Mystics and Cabalists of the Middle Ages [were joined] with the severely simple Sabbatarian worship and tenets set forth in their primitive Bible teachings" (German Sectarians, 31). There was always a heavy blend of Rosicrucianism in Boehme, in the mystics of the Wissahickon, in Beissel, Zinzendorf, in them all, Muhlenberg aside.

Theosophists well loved were not confined to particular time and place. Percival Lowell  stationed himself in Occult Japan so that he could take a space jump when he underwent possession in his Shinto ritual. Whether to be possessed by food or the gods, or a girl? Or shall we be satisfied merely to say our names in sobriety and let that be enough? Was Sauer's criticism mere sour grapes, for "all was well between the two men until Sauer's wife left her husband and family to follow…a stricter observance (313).

Mania can't hold still. Beissel is one who "journeyed towards the valley of the Pequea to bring about an awakening among the Mennonites, who had settled there, many of whom had become followers of the seductive Bauman and his noxious "Newborn" teaching.

"Many thousands of these people cared so little for religion [or so much] that it became a common saying in reference to such, who cared neither for God nor His word, that they had the Pennsylvania religion" (Spangenberg as quoted by Sachse, I, 442).

Hawthorne's Dimmesdale impregnated a naif to prove that human nature cannot be altered by ordinary means.

There was a continual flow between the Moravians at Bethlehem and Beissel at Ephrata about 1742 (Sachse, German Sectarians, 424).

Esoteric teaching, secret ritual, mystic lies

 have  truth meant as bait for all poor flies

who find the sweetness bitter as they dive,

but with enjoyment skim the surfaces.

Deeper dive to bitter seeming truth,

which is so sweet and satisfying beneath.

This is the way of opposites and earth.

Nothing is so unimportant as the principled/unprincipled conflict of principals.

Megalomania is incomplete without projection upon the other, that holiest of psychological mechanisms where the outer world is inflicted with the inner.

The comet must be punitive if Beissel says so.

One is tempted to be facetious and say that elaborations upon these practices in Felker's Schwamp coined a new deep pit baptism. In this ritual celebrants had their feet tied to a rope suspended from a branch over water and were raised and lowered three times head first. You believe that? Also, Oley Judizers practiced left and right side baptism. There was foot first baptism, reserved for sects whose final planting at burial was made ready to be raised, so they were buried standing up. Why douse a sick girl with buckets of water three times in the middle of the night? To be able to say at her funeral that it was just in time for her death. Sprinkle or plunge, forwards or backward, splash one, two, three, that's obvious Pennsylvania.

Some Sources:

On the musical compositions of Conrad Beissel. Peter Miller to Ben Franklin, President of the American Philosophical Society (1768)

"The Present, which I have added, was the Father's musical Book, wherein are contained the most part of the Musical Concerts, by himself composed. It did cost three Brethren three Quarters of a Year Work to write the same: by the Imbelllshment thereof It will appear, what a great Regard we had for our Superior, In the whole Book there Is no musical Error. And as It was written before the Mystery of Singing was fully discovered, there- for are not all the Keys therein mentioned. The Masters of that Angelic Art will be astonished to see that therein a Man, destituted of all human Instruction, came therein to the highest Pitch of Perfection, merely through his own Industry. Also, that when he did set up a School In the Camp, not only the Members of the Single Station were therewith occupied for many years : but also the Family- Brethren were also thereby enamoured, that their natural Affection, to their Family suffered a great Loss.

It Is a Wonder, how the even Notes and few half-notes can be so marvellously transposed, as to make thereby 1000 Melodies, all of 5 Tunes, and some of 6 Tunes, yea some of 7 Tunes, also that they came not one the other In the Way. In the Composition the Father had the same Way as in his Writings, viz : he suspended his considering Faculty, and putting his Spirit on the Pen, followed its Dictates strictly, also were all the Melodies flown from the Mystery of Singing, that was opened within him, there- fore have they that Simplicity, which was required, to raise Edification. It Is certain, that the Confusion of Languages, which began at Babel, never did affect Singing: and therefore is in Substance of the Matter in the Whole."

Peasant art, tramp art, folk art connects to the radical religious Anabaptist and demonstrates the integrity of its life. The extremes are interesting juxtaposed against each other but are nothing compared with old world extremes where celebration of baptism was held  to be worthy of death.  Switzerland vs. Pennsylvania was the greater contrast.Finally, it's very rare to find someone who writes down something and does reveal their disease in the writing.
One of the first publications in Pennsylvania was Conrad Beissel's The Mystery of Lawlessness (Andrew Bradford, 1729), translated by Michael Wohlfarth. It's easy to exaggerate lawless effects from Gottlieb Mittelberger (1756) to Jack D. Marietta and Gail Stuart Rowe's Troubled Experiment (University of Pennsylvania, 2006), which is shocked to learn that the crime rate among Germans was greater than among English, as if there were statistics. To combine the mystic and the outlaw, Pennsylvania may have as many mystical hard cases as libertines. They make a work of roaring contradiction.

Early Pennsylvania was a frontier contrary to the reputation of peaceful Quakers, a haven of religious plurality and a contest among public relations teams of the majorities. Spiritual lawlessness turned into law attracted dueling personalities who contended over the sabbath, sex and separation from the world. Whether it wife with husband or sensuous goose of the table, "luxurious indulgence" was an offense to them. Buñuel's Simon of the Desert gets the spirit of this monasticism when it exchanges death threats one against each other. Contemporary establishment charismatics Paul Crouch, Benny Hinn, et al. continue death threats (xvii) against Hanegraaff and his children. Prophetic authority, tithing, healing were all turned lawlessness along with baptism, chastity, Sabbaths and communal living. Should it be called spiritual inconsistency? Convinced they were headed east they called it west.

One Pennsylvania prophet who opposed them all was Matthias Baumann of Oley, founder of the Newborn. He objects to baptism in all its forms. He opposes all devout practices, says that "all that Christ and his Apostles commanded have become vast idolatry," calls the sects and denominations, Christians without Christ,  (Call to the Unregenerate. Tr. Stoudt. Berks County Historical Review, Fall, 1978, 144). In the context of continuing  epidemic spiritual lawlessness he says, "all people want to look at Christianity from the outside...and they know nothing about the inward ground" (138). The outer ground is here the mystic lawlessness, not confined to practice only. Baumann's direct speech calls into question the plague of gnostic transferences from Eve to the body and to women.

Conrad Reiff in the Journey to Pennsylvania (1696 -1777, )

Conrad Reiff  in the Journey to Pennsylvania (1696 -1777, )

 

This is an alternate draft of the article that appeared in the Berks County Historical Review. The second half of this article continues here.

"Journey" in German is reise, which becomes
 Reife from the old type convention substituting
 f for s in type setting, so almost Reiff nach
 Pennsylvanien.

The natives in Gottlieb Mittelberger's  Journey to Pennsylvania (1756) may be the first in all travel accounts to talk back. Moralizers like the author of that Journey are not like the scientific Elizabethan Thomas Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia who went with Raleigh to Virginia in 1585 or the poet Francis Daniel Pastorius who founded Germantown in 1683, Description of Pennsylvania (1700). Organ meister Mittelberger (1714-1758) is a gossip and temporary immigrant who only sticks it out a few years. This charms us in a way. He arrived in Pennsylvania in 1750 and was so offended with the "lawlessness," especially of one Conrad Reiff, that when he returned to Germany he exposed the many "unfortunate circumstances of most of the Germans who have moved to that country or are about to do so" (Journey, 1). " Someone told me" all this, he says, "and I partly found out for myself" (8).

Yahoos of Oley

His translators Handlin and Clive call his gossip "direct observations" when it concerns the unfortunate German travelers who sold their future as indentured servants to get passage. But other than Capt. John Deimer and a preacher or two, Mittelberger names only two examples of “the wicked life some people lead in this free country” (84). Overcome with the circumstances “on my voyage to and fro” (9) he reports the “divine retribution” that fell on these Yahoos of Oley. Yahoo signifies a filthy crude brute, a prejudice that overtook both native and immigrant out of Gulliver's Travels that affect even more recent travelers like  William Least Heat Moon, who, in searching his “shelves [for] accounts of exploration and travel in America, pulled down Journey To Pennsylvania...astonished to come across an anecdote in the Journey about one of my grandfathers [Conrad Reiff] eight generations back" (River-Horse, 92). He learns there that they “often met to pour ridicule and insults upon the preachers and the assembled congregation” (84), were the worst of all misguided folk who had "changed their faith" (83) and in 1753, when these two scoffers met again, according to their evil habit…” (84) they came to ruination. Moon thinks the "assertions about divine retribution are mendacious" (93), but Mittelberger says it “had a visible effect on other scoffers." Moon, facetiously agreeing with the adversary, says he is proud of his ancestor, "like grandfather, like grandson," (92)… "he did die unshriven!" (93). But Moon, if he must, must die alone in his sins, for his grandfather Conrad changed his ways, as we shall see.

Both Moon and Mittelberger are wrong, but take the organist first, who was a patron of organs long before he became a journalist. Long time resident Conrad Reiff had an organ too so they must have met early since organs were the purpose of Mittelberger's journey. “The organ was waiting for me,” he says, “ready to be shipped to Pennsylvania. With this organ I took the usual route down the Neckar and the Rhine…I spent nearly four years in America and, as my testimonials show, held the post of organist and schoolteacher in the German St. Augustine’s Church in Providence [Muhlenberg's church]” (7). His farcical tales, embellished arguments and “uproarious laughter” taken at face value for centuries, suffer from an abuse of the adverbs “often” and “frequent,” so even his style seems to question his assertions.

Doubt About the Organs

First, his organ bringing is in doubt. Lutheran pastor Peter Brunnholz, who assisted Henry Melchior Muhlenberg at Philadelphia and Germantown from 1745 to 1757, reported to Halle (the Institution that persuaded Muhlenberg to accept the call  to North America) in 1752 about organ building and existing organs in Pennsylvania, but "Mittelberger is not mentioned at all in the letter, raising the question of just what his connection with the organ was, if any” (Brunner, 51). Mittelberger says there were six organs in Pennsylvania at that time, "all of which came into the country during the four years of my stay there," but Brunner says there were "certainly more than six organs in Pennsylvania by the time he left in 1754,” and “the six he mentions did not all arrive during his stay" (53). These "exaggerations and inaccuracies," "embellishment of the facts casts doubt on his credibility" (53), and "since his claims concerning the two organs he was directly connected with as organist seem to be false, it is unlikely that he imported any organs at all" (54).  But Brunnholz's reliability may also be in doubt. He was that he was a suffering and terminally ill alcoholic,  apparent since 1754, mentioned in Muhlenberg's letter of 18 March 1757, the year of his death, as a "burden and an outrage." (Muhlenberg Correspondence, Vol 4, 29-30). But there is reason to question Mittelberger beyond the his organs. Even if "reliable” witnesses may have “told him” of the scoffers’ actions he would have known himself the details of 1753 he reports, since he did not return to Germany for another year. his zeal to put offenders in their place claims Conrad Reiff died of an act of “divine retribution” when in fact he lived two decades more.



 It’s not that Mittelberger didn’t know the malefactors well. Huffnagel and Conrad Reiff were long time citizens. Huffnagel owned land in Oley since 1717, (Philip E. Pendleton. Oley Valley Heritage. The Colonial Years: 1700-1775, 177) and assigned a tract to Reiff in 1743. Their lands adjoin in 1750 (198). Mittelberger would have gotten around to see them based on his talent with the organ, and because he is a new journalist we expect him at social events.

The big event in January 1753 was the funeral of Conrad Reiff's mother, Anna. Mittelberger's employer, Pastor Muhlenberg had been asked to officiate. Mittelberger would have played the organ if it had not been held at a Mennonite church which had none. As a journalist he loved all "large and distinguished assembly" as Muhlenberg says this was in his Journals (I, 353). Was this where Mittelberger learned of Conrad Reiff's follies, for the January funeral was certainly before the putative eagles felled Reiff in his field in summer. The funeral, the eagle attack, Mittelberger's departure from Muhlenberg all occurred in 1753 three years before the Journey was published in 1756, but we imagine Mittelberger at the funeral chatting about how it was "still pretty difficult to hear good music" (Journey, 87) and complimenting private English "spinet or harpsichord concerts." There of course he would boast, "I brought the first organ into the country" (87) and about the "fine and good instruments" people came "up to thirty hours' journey" to hear [him] play. "Here's how to make better organ pipes, out of cedar trees with "a purer tone than those made of tin," he would say (56). All the organs "came into the country during the four years of my stay" (88). What a love of music won't do! He even played "the organ for a savage family" (63).

At the wedding reception he would have told about the "clumsy hangman" (73), the young wife and the old wife (71-2), the turtles at the market (50), the fireflies (61). But even though the funeral was in Salford they wouldn't talk of Oley. Crude Oley was home of the "New Born" monsters: "such outrageous coarseness and rudeness result from the excessive freedom in that country" (48). Mittelberger knew Reiff as one of those who mocked the "preachers" and made "the German and English newspapers of Philadelphia" (45) laugh with their crudities. But that is what you expect when "totally unlearned men [preached] in the open fields" (44). "Most preachers are engaged... like cowherds in Germany" (47).

 Mittelberger's naive translators say he is accurate in "direct observations" (xvi) of the Redemptioners who enticed poor German immigrants into selling themselves for passage so that "later scholars who have reviewed the evidence have been well impressed by the accuracy of the book" (xvi). But it was not a direct observation when "a flight of golden eagles" attacked Reiff in his field because of his "wicked life," and tried "to kill him." This symbolic justice eagle also came came to tear out little Stephen Dedalus' eyes. "Apologize apologize," they threatened poor Stephen, "the eagle will come and pull out your eyes!" Such fear was struck in Conrad Reiff's heart, that "from that time on he would not trust himself out of his house." Mittelberger says he only survived at all by the intervention of his neighbors. But this is every bit a crock, none of which happened:

"Reif...was suddenly attacked in his field by a flight of golden eagles who sought to kill him. And this would have happened without fail had he not piteously cried for help, so that some neighbors came to his assistance. From that time on, he would not trust himself out of his house. He fell victim to a wasting disease and died in sin, unrepentant and unshriven. These two examples had a visible effect on other scoffers, similarly inclined (85)."

"The two scoffers struck their bargain." Huffnagel "who had been so ready to get rid of his place in Heaven, wanted to go down [italics ours] to his cellar the next day [and] suddenly dropped dead." Conrad got the better part. He took Huffnagel's place in heaven for his own in hell, says Mittelberger: That is, in a stroke of poetic justice he bargained for hell and died in the basement! Let that be a lesson! Scholar Pendleton thinks this is too apocryphal (108) at least by half, but Huffnagel did die in 1753, suddenly, that is, intestate. So Mittelberger is shall we say one for two, for Reiff lived two decades more (d. 1777). Only one further correction is necessary, Conrad Reiff  did not live unshriven as the reprobate Least Heat Moon hopes to justify his own sins, any more than he was a "victim to [Mittelberger's] wasting disease...unrepentant." Our Conrad died "in hopes of a joyful resurrection," as we will see. So be careful what you wish for and what you trust.

After the funeral of Conrad Reiff's mother Anna above, where we recall the offender and righteous met over bowls, Pastor Muhlenberg wrote, "she had several married sons who are well thought of, and some of these profess the Reformed religion while others believe in nothing but the transitory riches of this earth" (Journals, I, 352). Conrad was the one with riches but not the Reformed religion. He married Margaretha, daughter of New Born scion Philip Kuhlwein, brother-in-law of Matthias Baumann, founder of the Newborn. Conrad inherited Kuhlwein's land in 1736 (Pendleton, 108) and Baumann's (d. 1727) to boot! The configurations of the Baumann and Kuhlwein estates of 1725, adjoin on a southwest axis, and are roughly equivalent to the Conrad Reiff estate of 1750. This is success in "transitory riches."


Huffnagel and Reiff were however as Mittelberger claimed, "archenemies of clergy," tasteless as it seems, "scoffing at them and the Divine Word." They heaped "ridicule and insults upon preachers and the assembled congregations," and laughed at, "denying Heaven and future bliss as well as damnation in Hell" (Journey, 84). We are prepared to address the theology of the Newborn which will show some mitigation to these reports, but in the same language Mittelberger the Newborn Muhlenberg applies to Reiff's errant nephew, innkeeper Conrad Gehr, that he "ridiculed" the "Word of God and the other means of grace," mocked the churches by holding an "assembly of worship in his [tavern] house on Sunday" after which the enforced offering, "three pence apiece," was "consumed in drink." Communicants there argued that "revealed religion," "heaven and hell," are used by preachers merely "to make a living" (I, 352-3). That Huffnagel and Reiff "often met" implies the same sort of affair nephew Gehr was running in his tavern.

What Mittelberger complained of in 1753 however had been commonplace three or four decades before in the disorder of the frontier. One group focused this lawlessness better than others, that being the New Born. If Mittelberger is upset about their mockery of the church, it was old news by 1753, but you need an audience for anti-worship, of which the "meeting" in Gehr's tavern is a good example.

History reads better as fiction. Since we have disposed Huffnagel in the basement and Mittelberger has left the state, fast forward to Reiff ten years later, September 1764, at a collection taken up for the building of the Wentz Church, successor to the previously established Reiff Church founded by his brother and father. The intent of the fund raising campaign was to build a "House of Worship...in the Nurture of the Lord and to the Praise of His Holy Name." (The Perkiomen Region, I, 38). Fundraising efforts had fallen short. The first collecting tour raised only 12 pounds, 4 shillings. A second effort outside the immediate congregation found themselves "obliged to apply to the Charitable Benevolence of all well disposed Christians to contribute their Mite towards the finishing of the said Meeting House." George Alsentz, the Evangelical Reformed minister, urged (August 1764):  "In as much as the generous contributions hitherto received from kind friends were far from sufficient to defray the expenditures of our church we are obliged to turn to other benefactors to find out their benevolent disposition toward our enterprise…May the God of all mercy send his richest blessing upon all benefactors, such is my wish, and in witness of the foregoing I hereunto set my hand" (Glatfelter, 41).

This tour did better, raised 15 pounds, 9 shillings. They went to New Jersey, through Goshenhoppen "and then up towards Oley" (44). There were 400 contributions, illustrious names like Philip Boehm gave l shilling, Peter Miller, Beissel's right hand at Ephrata, editor of the Chronicon Ephratense, gave a shilling, Friedrich Hilligass (father of the first Treasury Secretary) gave 5. The two largest gifts, however, 10 shillings each, were made by Georg Welker and Conrad Reiff (39-44). So where is the renegade now, considering the language of the subscribing petition, and its references to "pious exercises," "the Nurture of the Lord " and "the Praise of His Holy Name?" What happened to "the Holy Scriptures old, outworn fables, tomfoolery, and the like, and said that the parsons had to make so and so out of it in order not to lose their bread and butter" (Muhlenberg I, 139). Acceptance of the pious language of the petition demonstrates a return from those who had "changed their faith" back to a reaffirmation of his Reformed roots. The Newborn were never politic in their beliefs but as "harsh and uncharitable" as Philip Bayer had been before his reconciliation (Muhlenberg I, 357).

Money was short, so again, when the first church was dedicated in November 1763, the "costs of this undertaking were greater than anticipated. "... incurred just as a depression hit the colonies following the French and Indian War" (Gladfelter I, 384). The assembly authorized a lottery to pay the debt, since "the members of the German Reformed church in the township of Worcester, in the county of Philadelphia, have erected a church and school house in the said township, the expense and costs whereof have been so great as to amount to a debt of six hundred pounds more than they are able to pay" (Gladfelter, I, 384).

The Will

Thus the change in Conrad Reiff in old age is just plain frustrating to mockery, but so is the language of his will, which deviates substantially from convention  in the statement of faith in the preface. Conventional language took a generic form. For example, the will of John Pawling of 1733 is word for word identical to the will of Christopher Dock in 1762.

"That is to say, Principally and first of all I give and recommend my Soul into the hands of God that gave it, and for my body I recommend it to the Earth to be buried in a Christian like and decent manner at the discretion of my Executor, nothing doubting but at the general Resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mighty Power of God, And as touching such Worldly Estate wherewith it has pleased God to bless me in this Life I give devise and dispose of the same in the following manner and form." (The Perkiomen Region, III, 17, and II, 25).

Slightly different phrasings, spellings, a different order of sentences and a shortened order of divine disposition mark the statement of Gabriel Shuler's will of 1776:

"First, I recommend my Soul in the hands of God my Creator, and my Body to the Earth to be buried at the Discrition of my Executors. And as for my worldly Goods & Effects, wherewith it hath pleased God to bless me in this Life, I give and dispose the same in Mannor following…"(The Perkiomen Region, II, 45).

Nicholas Wohlfart, in 1788 is content merely to say that "first of all I commend my Soul into the Hands of Almighty God that gave it" (The Perkiomen Region, I, 129). Mathias Sheiffle in 1790 says only that "first I Deliver my Soul in to the Hand of the allmighty god, and my body to the Earth to Be Buried in Christian Lick manner. . ." (The Perkiomen Region, I, 110).

But Conrad Reiff's confession of faith in his will is most explicit. If we compare it with his father's, Hans George (1726), and his brother George (1759), neither make any such statements: "I, John George Reiff of Salford Township for County of Philadelphia and province of Pennsylvania, Smith, being weak of Body but of Perfect Mind and Memory do make and Order this my last will and Testament. . ."(Riffe, 20). Conrad's brother George, proceeds: "Will of George Reiff, Germantown, Philadelphia County Pennsylvania…" (Riffe, 28).

Conrad's will of 1777 differs from his father's and brother's as much as it does from the general community, which suggests there was a point he wanted to make. "In the name of God Amen. I Conrad Reiff of Oley township in the county of Berks and province of Pennsylvania, Yeoman, being infirm and weak in body but of sound mind memory and understanding blessed be God for the same. And well knowing that all flesh must die therefore do make my last will and testament in the following manner. I recommend my infinite soul into the hands of Almighty God who gave it to me and my body to the earth whence it was taken in sure and certain hopes of a joyful resurrection through the merits of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Four notable points of departure which affect the disposition of soul and body set the will apart .

1) His "infinite" soul he gives into the hands of God.

2) His body is not recommended "to the Earth to be buried in a Christian like decent manner at the discretion of my Exects." He has neither "decent manner" nor discreet executor. He replaces the negative "nothing doubting," with his "certain hopes,"

3) not of a "general" but of a "joyful resurrection" that has his body, taken from earth once, taken once again. Finally he concludes that this all will occur

4) "through the merits of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" and not through such efforts as those offered, for example, by the secretary of Mr. Penn, through "our good works and obedience," cited below.

This last will and testament must have been made for his progeny and the public alike. The import that he does not trust in his own merits, riches or wit, but in the "merits of my Lord" and in the "certain hopes of a joyful resurrection," is not that of a scoffer, but words that Muhlenberg would ratify.

The important conclusions that emerge from this are, first, that the words of his will are the best confirmation we can get that Mittelberger, if he had the details wrong, got the essence right. Conrad Reiff leaves just such a personal testimony in his will because he was guilty of the behavior Mittleberger charged. He goes out of his way to contradict his past. A renunciation of the Newborn sinlessness is explicit in his statement, hence, we conclude, Mittelberger's report, at least the first part, is credible.

Second, the phrase "through the merits of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" is a polar opposite of the Newborn view reported by Boehm that "they claim that they have essential divinity in themselves" (Life and Letters, 1728, 161). As to the meaning of the phrase, Muhlenberg suggests that "the merits of my Lord" means "to wrap oneself in Jesus wounds…the words mean rather the perfect payment which our Mediator made for our sins, guilt, and punishment, the perfect righteousness which He obtained for us by His life, sufferings, and death. To inwrap one's self therein means to appropriate and assume Christ's merit and righteousness in faith. . ." (Journals, I, 123). To a Newborn such language would be repugnant, for the Newborn "pride themselves in their own righteousness" (Muhlenberg, I, 357). Conrad Reiff would not have been the first to come full circle, but he might have been the last such of the Newborn proselytes who founded the Oley Reformed Church.

In larger context the phrase "through the merits of my Lord" had been a rallying cry of George Whitfield when he made his trip through Philadelphia in 1739. Distinguishing between the outward and inward fruits of faith, so important to the Newborn who denied the need for the outward, also a point of contention for the Quakers. Whitefield had exhorted a Quaker meeting "that they would talk of an outward as well as an inward Christ; for otherwise, we make our own holiness, and not the righteousness of Jesus Christ the cause of our being accepted by God." (Journals, 338). This self-righteousness had been the crux of the Newborn's rejection of church and scripture. Following the theme further, Muhlenberg said, "…first one must wrap one's self in the wounds, then Christian living must follow." As we have noted from the Weiss' dialogues, (41) the outward, the living part was superfluous because "he has all the inner fruits, but he declares he can see no use for such outward things" (Sachse, 159). These outward things Conrad Reiff now affirms by commitment to the outer Christ, the one whose external merits become the means of his hope for the "joyful resurrection."

Whitefield revisits this when he returned to Philadelphia later that year, Sunday, November 25:

". . .after I had done preaching a young gentleman, once a minister of the Church of England, but secretary to Mr. Penn, stood up with a loud voice, and warned the people against the doctrine I had been delivering, urging, 'that there was no such term as imputed righteousness in Holy Scripture; that such a doctrine put a stop to all goodness; that we were to be judged for our good works and obedience, and were commanded to do and live.' When he had ended, I denied his first proposition, and brought a text to prove that "imputed righteousness" was a scriptural expression…I discoursed in the afternoon, and shewed how the Lord Jesus was to be our whole righteousness . . .the church was thronged within and without; all were wonderfully attentive; and many, as I was informed, were convinced that the Lord Christ was our Righteousness" (Journals, 352,353).

On April 24, 1740 Whitefield preached thus also at Skippack, but of course the doctrine of the Substitution cannot be thought peculiar to him or to the Moravians who assisted in the Skippack visit (Journals, 410). It is likely Conrad Reiff had several chances to adopt such a phrase in his life and in his will and it is good possibility that he did so through the Moravians. So it is a loaded phrase that he demonstrates in a word that in his end he had come back to his beginning.

Works Cited

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