The reference to Jacob owning slaves needs to be examined. Here, he is not a slave holder: Henry pawling and slaves “Frederick Conrad’s Docket includes the entry that on August 10, 1792, “Negro Phillis, aged about one year and eleven months, a child abandoned by her late master, Joseph Pawling, dec’d, was bound by Jacob Horning and Jacob Reiff, Overseers of the Poor of Perkiomen, to Lewis Truckenmiller, his heirs and assignees, for the term of sixteen years, to be instructed in housekeeping and be taught to read intelligibly and have customary freedom due.”
[It is obvious the Skippack Reformed Church was independent and formed on an independent not a hierarchical basis, which makes the letter of special significance. It gives this freedom to congregations and if it is a forgery of Jacob Reiff's, as they alleged then, then allow with the blame of the offender the praise of a philosopher, for it was a true statement of the time.]
[Speaking of those pastors of the first Reformed Church in Pennsylvania, Boehm and Weiss, Sachse observes that it is "a strange coincidence that both Boehm and Baumann came to Pennsylvania about the same time from Lambsheim, in the Palatinate" (The German Sectarians, I, 157). Five years separated them. Hinke has Baumann arriving in Philadelphia in 1718, Sachse in 1719, but Pendleton (176) cites land office records that show Baumann already residing in the Oley Valley in 1714. Since Baumann had left Lambsheim in 1714 and Boehm did not resign his position as schoolmaster in Worms until November 22, 1715 (Hinke, 15) their paths did not cross in Lambsheim and at least his one indignity can be spared Mr. Boehm.]
If it is wondered why the Newborn sect rejected the Bible and its teachings, the text recorded above by Spangenberg (6) should be noted, that is, I John 1.8: "if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."
