Article _Mamillaires_). It is from
the additional authorities that I learn the fact of the removal of
Labadie from Montauban to Orange; the Article in the _N. Biog.
Gen._ omits it.--I have seen two publications of Labadie at
Montauban--one of 1650, entitled _Declaration de Jean de L'Abadie,
cydevant prestre_, giving his reasons for quitting the Church of
Rome; the other of 1651, entitled _Lettre de J. de L'Abadie a ses
amis de la Communion Romaine touchant sa Declaration_.]

TO JEAN LABADIE, MINISTER OF ORANGE.

"If I answer you rather late, distinguished and reverend Sir, our
common friend Durie, I believe, will not refuse to let me transfer
the blame of the late answer from myself to him. For, now that he
has communicated to me that paper which you wished read to me, on
the subject of your doings and sufferings in behalf of the Gospel,
I have not deferred preparing this letter for you, to be given to
the first carrier, being really anxious as to the interpretation
you may put upon my long silence. I owe very great thanks meanwhile
to your Du Moulin of Nismes [not far from Orange], who, by his
speeches and most friendly talk concerning me, has procured me the
goodwill of so many good men in those parts. And truly, though I
am not ignorant that, whether from the fact that I did not, when
publicly commissioned, decline the contest with an adversary of
such name [Salmasius], or on account of the celebrity of the
subject, or, finally, on account of my style of writing, I have
become sufficiently known far and wide, yet my feeling is that I
have real fame only in proportion to the good esteem I have among
good men. That you also are of this way of thinking I see
plainly--you who, kindled by the regard and love of Christian
Truth, have borne so many labours, sustained the attacks of so many
enemies, and who bravely do such actions every day as prove that,
so far from seeking any fame from the bad, you do not fear rousing
against you their most certain hatred and maledictions. O happy man
thou! whom God, from among so many thousands, otherwise knowing and
learned, has snatched singly from the very gates and jaws of Hell,
and called to such an illustrious and intrepid profession of his
Gospel! And at this moment I have cause for thinking that it has
happened by the singular providence of God that I did not reply to
you sooner. For, when I understood from your lette