ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



In point of time the Moravian Church, or Unitas Fratrum, stands fore- 

 most in this newer, truer movement, though in point of time only. For in 

 the communistic spirit which underlay half the conception of this church it 

 seems more akin to the twentieth century than to the eighteenth. As far as 

 England is concerned the earliest phase of Moravian history is of no interest. 

 It was not until the reconstruction or renewal of the Moravian Church in 

 1727 by Zinzendorf that this country enters the circle of its influence. 

 In 1728 Johan Toeltschig was dispatched hither from Herrnhut, but his visit 

 proved resultless. More important in its effect was the Moravian contingent 

 which was sent in 1733 under Spangenburg to take part in the colonization 

 of Georgia. For it was in the company of these men that the Wesleys sailed 

 to Georgia to learn from communion with them not merely the witness of 

 the inner light of the Spirit, but the value of that organization which John 

 Wesley subsequently copied in his own Church. When five years later 

 Wesley returned to London discontented, he for a time almost identified 

 himself with the Moravian Society, which existed in embryo at James 

 Mutton's house in Little Wild Street, and from which sprang in 1742 the 

 Fetter Lane Society, the first in date, and throughout the chief, of the 

 Moravian churches in England. The spread of the movement to Yorkshire was 

 partly due to accident. Benjamin Ingham, the evangelistic clergyman of 

 Ossett, Leeds, invited the Brethren to assist him in the administration of the 

 societies he had formed round him. Accordingly in May, 1742, twenty-six 

 brethren and sisters were sent from London to Yorkshire, and making their 

 head quarters at Smith House, near Wyke, spread their influence rapidly over 

 the north of England. In eighteen months they had forty-seven preaching 

 places, and the community at Fulneck had become a second Herrnhut. 



In 1743 the Moravians entered Lancashire, where the ground had been 

 prepared for them since 1740 by the preaching of David Taylor. The 

 society formed in 1743 at Dukinfield in Cheshire by Job Bennet is to be 

 regarded in the main as an offshoot from Smith House ; for though Bennet 

 was himself a Derbyshire man and was assisted by Derbyshire people, he drew 

 his light directly from a visit to the Moravians at Smith House. Dukinfield 

 became the centre of the Moravian interest for the counties of Lancaster, 

 Chester and Derby. In October, 1748, the house of John Kelsal was licensed 

 as a meeting-place, but in 1751 a chapel was built, and an attempt was made 

 to form a Moravian settlement at Dukinfield after the pattern of Fulneck. 

 In consequence, however, of the uncertainty of the tenure of the land the society 

 migrated in 1785 to Fairfield, near Manchester, and there, besides the church, 

 communal buildings, brothers' houses, and sisters' houses, &c., were built. 

 Fairfield is still the head and centre of the Brethren's interest in Lancashire, 

 but its communal character as a Moravian village, and the communal buildings 

 and institutions, have long since gone. It is now practically only a church. 



Its missionary work was comparatively small and comparatively abortive. 

 The cause which it started at Miles Platting and that at Liverpool (1856) 

 are both extinct, as is also its early work at Openshaw, for the existing 

 church at this place is quite modern (1899). 



The intention at the time of the migration was to desert Dukinfield 

 altogether ; but this was found impracticable, and accordingly the cause at 

 Dukinfield was retained as subordinate to or a ' filial ' of that at Fairfield. 



■7 Si II 



