57, 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