Zinzendorf*

I spoke with Zinzendorf after his death, and at that time his life and life's affection, and then the principles of his religion, were disclosed; for a spirit can be put into such a state that he conceals nothing at all but reveals everything. Revealed then were the following:

1) He was above all a persuasive man, and he exercised his persuasiveness by claiming to know the mysteries of heaven and contending that no one enters into heaven but a follower of his doctrine. 2) He spoke with others at first in conformity with their religion, thus making pretense and so winning them over, and afterward he sowed in them his mysteries, exploring well beforehand whether they would be accepted and concealed. 3) I was told it had been a mystery of his faith that the Lord was born to be the adoptive Son of God, and that at first he believed the Lord to have been simply the adoptive Son of God, thus that he was an Arian.** 4) He held previously that the Lord's Divinity was the Divine as it exists in others, now that it is something more. 5) He was scarcely willing to hear of the Lord's conception from the Divine, according to Matthew and Luke. He turned away and refused to say what he felt, it too being a mystery that he is afraid to make known. 6) He attributed sins to the Lord. He also held that in the Gospels the Lord spoke no better than any other person, calling His utterances obscure. He cares nothing for the Old Testament, nor was he willing to hear what is written there concerning the Lord. 7) He rejected a life of charity altogether, and regarded it as detestable to think of God and salvation from the standpoint of anything having to do with a person's life-maintaining that faith apart from charity saves. 8) He believed that only he and his followers would enter heaven, and that they alone were really alive and everyone else dead. 9) They say of themselves what the Lord said of Himself, that they are sons of God, that they are without sins, that they are life and truth, because any evil in those who are possessed of faith is not regarded, and therefore they are life and truth; and they call their life blameless because it is alive through faith. * Count Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf, 1700-1760, a German reformer and organizer of the Moravian Church. Zinzendorf proclaimed a "religion of the heart," based on an intimate fellowship with the Savior, whose Person, conceived as Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer of the world, completely dominated his theology. Though forced by circumstances to separate from the Lutheran Church, he continued to maintain a close connection with it. Widely traveled, he founded Moravian communities in the Baltic provinces, Holland, England, the West Indies, and North America. ** An adherent of Arianism, a theological view based on the teachings of Arius (c. 250-336), who taught that Christ the Son was a created being, not consubstantial with God the Father, and thus not Divine.