all
Protestants, was born in Dresden in 1700. His ancestors, originally from
Austria, had been Crusaders and Counts of Zinzendorf. One of the
Zinzendorfs had been among the earliest converts to Lutheranism, and
became a voluntary exile for the faith. The count's father was one of
the Pietists, a sect protected by the first king of Prussia, the father
of Frederick the Great. The founder of the Pietists laid special stress
on the doctrine of conversion by a sudden transformation of the heart
and will. It was a young Moravian missionary to Georgia who first
induced Wesley to embrace the vital doctrine of justification by faith.
For a long time there was a close kinsmanship maintained between
Whitefield, the Wesleys, and the Moravians; but eventually Wesley
pronounced Zinzendorf as verging on Antinomianism, while Zinzendorf
objected to Wesley's doctrine of sinless perfection. In 1722 Zinzendorf
gave an asylum to two families of persecuted Moravian brothers, and
built houses for them on a spot he called Hernhut ("watched of the
Lord"), a marshy tract in Saxony, near the main road to Zittau. These
simple and pious men were Taborites, a section of the old Hussites, who
had renounced obedience to the Pope and embraced the Vaudois doctrines.
This was the first formation of the Moravian sect.

"On January 24th, 1672-73," says Baxter, "I began a Tuesday lecture at
Mr. Turner's church, in New Street, near Fetter Lane, with great
convenience and God's encouraging blessing; but I never took a penny for
it from any one." The chapel in which Baxter officiated in Fetter Lane
is that between Nevil's Court and New Street, once occupied by the
Moravians. It appears to have existed, though perhaps in a different
form, before the Great Fire of London. Turner, who was the first
minister, was a very active man during the plague. He was ejected from
Sunbury, in Middlesex, and continued to preach in Fetter Lane till
towards the end of the reign of Charles II., when he removed to Leather
Lane. Baxter carried on the Tuesday morning lecture till the 24th of
August, 1682. The Church which then met in it was under the care of Mr.
Lobb, whose predecessor had been Thankful Owen, president of St. John's
College, Oxford. Ejected by the commissioners in 1660, he became a
preacher in Fetter Lane. "He was," says Calamy, "a man of genteel
learning and an excellent temper, admir'd for an uncommon fluency and
easiness and sweetness in all his composures. Afte