ieved and blazoned
about Morus, for the murder of Morus's reputation over Europe, and
his ruin in the French Protestant Church in particular. Nor does the
reported sequel of Labadie's life, in the ordinary accounts of him,
lessen the wonder.--Labadie did not come to London, as Milton had
hoped. When he received Milton's letter, he was on the wing for
Geneva, where he arrived in June 1659, and where he continued his
preaching. Here, in the very city where Morus had once been, there
still were commotions round him; and, after new wanderings in
Germany, we find him at Middleburg in Holland in 1666, thus again by
chance in a town where Morus had been before him. At Middleburg he
seems to have attained his widest celebrity, gathering a body of
admirers and important adherents, the chief of whom was "Mademoiselle
Schurmann, so versed in the learned languages." At length a quarrel
with M. de Wolzogue, minister of the Walloon church at Utrecht,
brought Labadie into difficulties with the Walloon Synod and with the
State authorities, and he migrated to Erfurt, and thence to Altona,
where he died in 1674, "in the arms of Mademoiselle Schurmann," who
had followed him to the last. He left a sect called _The
Labadists_, who were strong for a time, and are perhaps not yet
extinct. Among the beliefs they inherited from him are said to have
been these:--(1) That God may and does deceive man; (2) That
Scripture is not necessary to salvation, the immediate action of the
Spirit on souls being sufficient; (3) That there ought to be no
Baptism of Infants; (4) That truly spiritual believers are not bound
by law and ceremonies; (5) That Sabbath-observance is unnecessary,
all days being alike; (6) That the ordinary Christian Church is
degenerate and decrepit. One sees here something like a French
Quakerism, but with ingredients from older Anabaptism. Had Milton's
letter had the intended effect, the sect might have had its home in
London.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Nouvelle Biographie Generale_, as before.--It is
to be remembered that Milton himself authorized the publication of
his letter to Badiaeus with his other Latin Familiar Epistles in
1674 (see Vol. I. p. 239). By that time he must have known the whole
subsequent career of Labadie and all the reports about him; and he
cannot even then have thought ill of him or of Mad'lle Schurmann.
To the end, he liked all bold schismatics and sectaries, if they
took a forward direction.]

Virtually at an en