UNITED BRETHREN UNITED GREEKS. 



725 



of the purity of the community is entrusted to the 

 board of elders and its different members, who are 

 to give instruction and admonition to those under 

 their care, and make a discreet use of the esta- 

 blished church discipline. In cases of immoral 

 conduct, or flagrant disregard of the regulations 

 of the society, this discipline is resorted to. If 

 expostulations are not successful, offenders are 

 for a time restrained from participating in the holy 

 communion, or called before the committee. For 

 pertinacious bad conduct, or flagrant excesses, the 

 culpable individual is dismissed from the society. 

 The ecclesiastical church officers, generally speak- 

 ing, are the bishops, through whom the regular 

 succession of ordination, transmitted to the United 

 Brethren through the ancient church of the Bohe- 

 mian and Moravian Brethren, is preserved, and who 

 alone are authorized to ordain ministers, but possess 

 no authority in the government of the church, ex- 

 cept such as they derive from some other office, 

 being most frequently the presidents of some board 

 of elders ; the civil seniors, to whom, in subordina- 

 tion to the board of elders of the Unity, belongs 

 the management of the external relations of the 

 society ; the presbyters, or ordained stated minis- 

 ters of the communities, and the deacons. The 

 degree of deacon is the first bestowed upon young 

 ministers and missionaries, by which they are 

 authorized to administer the sacraments. Females, 

 although elders among their own sex, are never or- 

 dained ; nor have they a vote in the deliberations 

 of the board of elders, which they attend for the 

 sake of information only It now remains to give 

 some account of the numbers and extension of this 

 society, which are often strangely exaggerated On 

 the continent of Europe, together with Great Bri- 

 tain, the number of persons living in their different 

 communities, or formed into societies closely con- 

 nected with the Unity, does not exceed thirteen 

 or fourteen thousand, including children. Their 

 number in the United States of America falls some- 

 thing short of four thousand souls. Besides these, 

 there are about three times this number of persons 

 dispersed through Germany, Livonia, &c., who are 

 occasionally visited by brethren, and strengthened 

 in their religious convictions, while they have no 

 external connexion with the Unity. These cannot 

 be considered members of the society, though they 

 maintain a spiritual connexion with it. The num- 

 ber of converts from heathen nations, as regularly 

 reported at the last synod, in the year 1825, though 

 larger than at any previous time, did not exceed 

 34,000 souls, comprehending all those who are in 

 any way under the care of the missionaries. In- 

 deed, it never was the object of the society to at- 

 tempt the Christianization of whole nations or 

 tribes, us such must be a mere nominal conversion. 

 They profess to admit those only to the rite of 

 baptism who give evidence of their faith by the 

 change wrought in their life and conduct. On this 

 account, they have every where introduced among 

 their heathen converts a discipline similar to their 

 own, as far as circumstances permit. It would be 

 preposterous to conceive that the peculiar views, 

 and the regulations of a society such as that of the 

 United Brethren, could ever be adopted by any 

 large body of men. They are exclusively calcu- 

 lated for small communities. Any one desirous of 

 separating from the society meets with no hinder- 

 ance. The following is a succinct view of the 

 principal establishments of the society : In Eng- 

 land, their chief settlements are Fulnec in York- 



shire, Fairfield in Lancashire, Ockbrook in Derby- 

 shire : congregations exist likewise in London, Bed- 

 ford, Bristol, Bath, Plymouth, Haverfordwest, to- 

 gether with a number of country congregations in 

 divers villages. In Ireland, they have a consider- 

 able community at Gracehill, in the county of An- 

 trim, and small congregations at Dublin, Gracefield 

 and Ballinderry. On the continent of Europe, 

 Herrnhut, Niesky and Kleinwelke in Upper Lusa- 

 tia, Gnadenfrew, Gnadenberg, Gnadenfeld and Neu- 

 saltz in Silesia, Ebensdorf, near Lobenstein, Neu- 

 dietendorf in the duchy of Gosna, Kbnigsfeld in 

 that of Baden, Neuwied on the Rhine, Christians- 

 feld in Holstein, Zeyst, near Utrecht, in Holland, 

 and Sarepta, on the confines of Asiatic Russia, are 

 the names of their separate communities ; besides 

 which there are organized societies at Berlin, Rix- 

 dorf, Potsdam, Konigsberg, Norden in Friesland, 

 Copenhagen, Altona, Stockholm, Gottenburgj 'St 

 Petersburg and Moscow. In the United States, 

 they have separate communities at Bethlehem, 

 Nazareth and Litiz in Pennsylvania, and at Salem 

 in North Carolina. Bethlehem is, next to the 

 mother community at Herrnhut, in Germany, their 

 largest establishment. Besides these, there are 

 congregations at Newport in Rhode Island, at New 

 York, at Philadelphia, Lancaster and Yorktown, 

 at Graceham in Maryland ; and several country 

 congregations are scattered through Pennsylvania, 

 the members of which chiefly dwell on their planta- 

 tions, but have a common place of worship. There 

 are four of this description in North Carolina, in 

 the vicinity of Salem. Their principal missions 

 among the heathen, at this time, are the following : 

 among the negro slaves in the three Danish West 

 India islands ; in Jamaica, St Kitts, Antigua, Bar- 

 badoes, Tobago, and in Surinam, among the in- 

 habitants of colour ; in Greenland, among the 

 natives of that desolate region ; in Labrador, among 

 the Esquimaux ; at the cape of Good Hope, among 

 the Hottentots and Caffres ; and in North America, 

 among the Delaware Indians in Canada, and the 

 Cherokees in Georgia. It is a general principle of 

 the society, that their social organization is in no 

 case to interfere with their duties as citizens or 

 subjects of governments under which they live, and 

 wherever they are settled. They have always sup- 

 ported a good reputation, and been generally con- 

 sidered valuable members of the community, on ac- 

 count of the moral and industrious habits success- 

 fully inculcated by their system. 



UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND 

 See New England. 



UNITED GREEKS are Christians who origin- 

 ally belonged to the Greek church, but whom the 

 Roman church has united with her own members 

 on certain conditions. They differ from the Greek 

 church in believing that the Holy Ghost proceeds 

 both from the Father and the Son, by believing 

 also in the supremacy of the pope, in purgatory, 

 and the efficacy of masses for souls, according to 

 the doctrines of the 'Roman church. They have 

 their own church government, and retain the old 

 names of ecclesiastical dignities. Their priests 

 wear beards and caps, and are allowed to marry. 

 They retain the ancient rites, the Greek language 

 during service, the strict Greek fasts, and the Lord's 

 supper under both forms, in common with the old 

 Greek church, because the Jesuit missionaries, who 

 gradually effected their conversion in the seven- 

 teenth and eighteenth centuries could not induce 

 them to make changes in these particulars. Such 



