Miller, John Peter

Miller, John Peter a talented but eccentric American minister, was born in the Palatinate, Germany, about the year 1715; was thoroughly educated in his native land; came to this country in 1730; was licensed and ordained by the Philadelphia Synod of the Presbyterian Church; and in 1731 became pastor of the German Reformed Church in Tulpehocken, Berks County, Pennsylvania, where he labored successfully for about four years. In 1735 he fell in with an enthusiast by the name of Beissel, by whom he was immersed, and so became identified with the Seventh-day Baptists. Flying from the society of the world, he entered upon a solitary or monastic life at the base of a mountain, near a "limpid spring." He afterwards, urged by the force of his trials, entered the cloister of the Seventh-day Baptists at Ephrata, Pennsylvania. "Here, under the name of Jabez, he lived a quiet life as a Protestant monk, using a board for his bed at night, and devoting himself by day to what he imagined to be the service of God in severe self- castigation." See Harbaugh, Fathers of the Ref. Church, 1:301-311. (D.Y.H.)