ania, notably in Montgomery,
Berks, Lancaster, and York Counties, pressed toward the frontiers of
their State, and then followed the Cumberland Valley into Maryland and
far beyond into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, their number being
constantly increased by immigrants from Germany. To supply their needs,
Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, in 1772, was sent to Virginia, Woodstock
(Muellerstadt) being his home and the center of his field. Though
serving practically none but German Lutherans, he sought and secured
the ordination of the Episcopal Church in order 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
confirmat