American Lutheranism, page 159 by Friedrich Bente
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der to obtain legal recognition of his marriages. In Virginia the Protestant Episcopal Church was firmly established, and dissenters were compelled to pay an annual tribute to the established preachers. Says Muhlenberg, Sr.: "If dissenting parties were married by their own pastors, this was not legal, and they could not get off any cheaper than by paying the marriage dues to the established county preacher and obtaining a marriage certificate from him." (G., 606.) Together with W. White, afterward Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania, Peter Muhlenberg was ordained by the Bishop of London, after he had been examined and had subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles. By the indifferentistic Germans and Swedes of those days such ordinations were generally regarded as a favor and comity from the Episcopalians rather than a humiliation and denial on the part of the Lutherans. Dr. Kunze says: "The bishops of London have never made a difficulty to ordain Lutheran divines, when called to congregations which, on account of being connected with English Episcopalians, made this ordination requisite. Thus by bishops of London the following Lutheran ministers were ordained: Bryselius, Peter Muhlenberg, Illing, Houseal, and Wagner. The last-mentioned was called, after having obtained this ordination, to an Ev. Lutheran congregation in the Margraviate of Anspach in Germany." (Jacobs, 285.) Peter Muhlenberg viewed his Episcopal ordination as a purely civil affair, and, though claimed by the Episcopalians, he always regarded himself as a Lutheran. He died (1807) with the conviction that he had never been anything but a Lutheran. In a circular to the Lutheran churches of Philadelphia, dated March 14, 1804, he said: "Brethren, we have been born, baptized, and brought up in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Many of us have vowed before God and the congregation, at our confirmation, to live and die by this doctrine of our Church. In the doctrine of our Church we have our joy, our brightest joy; we prize it the more h