Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 | Page 7

morality and sought to bring
him into trouble with the authorities. The attacks to which he was
subjected led him to adopt a broad though wholly fanatical scheme of
reforms for the Church.[10] During the lifetime of Cardinal Richelieu,
who befriended him, he was safe from attack, but upon the succession
of Cardinal Mazarin the Jesuits obtained an order of the court for his
arrest, the execution of which was prevented by the death of the king.
In the year 1645 he was cited to appear at court along with his friend,
the Bishop of Amiens, and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment,
which sentence was modified on an appeal made by the assembly of the
clergy of France then in session. He was, however, ordered to renounce
his opinions and to refrain from preaching for a period of years. In one
of his treatises he states that during a second forced retirement he
obtained and read a copy of Calvin's Institutes. This had a determining
influence upon his after career.[11] He summed up the result of his
solitary reflections in the words, "This is the last time that Rome shall
persecute me in her communion. Up to the present I have endeavored to
help and to heal her, remaining within her jurisdiction; but now it is full
time for me to denounce her and to testify against her."
[Footnote 10: Déclaration de la Foi, pp. 84, 122, 123.]
[Footnote 11: Traité de la Solitude Chrétienne.]
At Montauban in 1650 Labadie abjured his former faith and was later

ordained a Protestant minister. According to Mollerus[12] the
acquisition of the widely famous preacher was heralded as the greatest
Protestant triumph since the days of Calvin. Banished from France in
1657, Labadie preached for two years at Orange (then independent) and
for seven years at Geneva, whence he was called to the pastorate of the
Walloon Reformed Church in Middelburg, Zeeland. At Middelburg he
became embroiled with the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, because
of controversial writings and because, filled with zeal to reform the
Reformed Church in the Netherlands and to awaken it from its
formalism, he carried his own congregation into positions and practices
manifestly tending toward schism. Driven out of Middelburg, he
established a church at Veere, which he styled the Evangelical. The
States of Zeeland kept the troublesome preacher on the move, and
Labadie journeyed to Amsterdam, where he had an opportunity to
establish a communal society, of which the chief ornament was Anna
Maria van Schurman of Utrecht, famed as the most learned woman of
her day.[13]
[Footnote 12: Cimbria Litterata, III. 37.]
[Footnote 13: Her Eukleria seu Melioris Partis Electio (Altona, 1673)
is perhaps the chief authority for the history of the Labadists from this
point on.]
The church at Amsterdam grew and prospered, and overtures were
received from many sectaries, including the Society of Friends, all of
which Labadie declined to consider. It may here be remarked that
similar overtures made by representatives of the Society of Friends to
the colony later established in Maryland were likewise unfruitful.
Certain disorders arising, the civil authorities placed such restrictions
upon the church at Amsterdam that another removal became expedient.
At this juncture, in 1670, an invitation was received from the Princess
Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Frederick V., Elector Palatine and King of
Bohemia, and granddaughter of King James I. of England. Elizabeth[14]
was Protestant abbess of Herford in Westphalia, and placed quarters in
that town at the disposal of the Labadists, but on account of certain
religious excesses and the suspicions aroused in the minds of

townspeople and neighbors, the Imperial Diet caused the Labadists to
remove. Some of them tarried for a while at Bremen but the majority
sought refuge immediately at Altona, then under the King of Denmark,
in 1672. At this place, in February, 1674, Labadie died. His death
evoked estimates of his work and worth from high ecclesiastical
sources, and much of this was of a laudatory nature. The Dutch
historians are disposed to regard Labadie's chief work the leavening of
the old lump by the many hundreds of his converts inspired with his
evangelical zeal, who remained in connection with the Reformed
Church.[15]
[Footnote 14: For this princess, see Guhrauer's article in the
Historisches Taschenbuch for 1850, and Miss Elizabeth Godfrey's A
Sister of Prince Rupert.]
[Footnote 15: H. van Berkum, De Labadie en de Labadisten (Sneek,
1851), II. 170 et seq. The history of the sect can be followed in Van
Berkum, in the first volume of Ritschl's Geschichte des Pietismus
(Bonn, 1880), and in Ypeij and Dermout, Geschiedenis der
Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk (Breda, 1827), vol. III.]
The next removal of the Labadists was to Wieuwerd in Friesland, the
northernmost of the Dutch provinces, where they were established
under the lead of Pierre Yvon on