A PLACE IN THE SUN
41
was somewhat, though not wholly, relieved when the German princes, assembled in the Diet at Regensburg in 1735, sent a strong appeal to the Austrian Emperor to treat his subjects with more toleration. When the Edict of Toleration was issued in 1781, permitting free worship, there still remained in Bohemia about 100,000 Protestants.[1] Of the refugees who fled to Germany in the first quarter of the eighteenth century many found their way with the Herrnhuters, or Moravians, as they are called in the United States, to Georgia, and others to Pennsylvania, where they established, in 1741, the flourishing town of Bethlehem, now the recognized centre of the Moravian Church in the United States.[2]
- ↑ However, the Patent of Tolerance extended only to Protestants of the Helvetian and Augsburg Confessions, not to the Bohemian Church, which latter had been denied recoguition.
- ↑ On February 9, 1748, a bill was introduced in the English Parliament “to relieve the United Brethren (so-called in Comenius’ time), or Moravians, from military duties and taking oaths.” Among the speakers was General Oglethorpe, who spoke in support of the bill. “In the year 1683 a most pathetic account of these brethren was published by order of Archbisbop Sancroft and Bishop Compton,” said Oglethorpe. “They also addressed the Church of England in the year 1715, being reduced to a very low ebb in Poland, and his late Majesty, George I., by the recommendation of the late Archbishop Wake, gave orders in council for the relief of these Reformed Episcopal Churches, and letters patent for their support were issued soon after. But since 1724 circumstances have altered for the better, and they have wonderfully revived, increased and spread in several countries. They have even made some settiements in America. In the province of Pennsylvania they have about 800 people to whom the proprietor and Governor gave very good character.”
