other minor contests arose at the same time. The result of the whole was, that the Collegiants, in 1686, were split into two opposing sects, and held their conventions in separate edifices at Rheinsburg. But on the death of the authors of these discords, near the beginning of the next century, the schism began to heal, and the Collegiants returned to their former union and harmony.3 §3. John Labadie, a Frenchman, eloquent, and a man of genius, was first a Jesuit; being dismissed from their society, he joined the Reformed, and sustained the office of a preacher with reputation, in France, Switzerland, and Holland. He at length set up a new sect, which formed a settlement first at Middleburg, in Zealand, and then at Amsterdam, and afterwards, in 1670, established itself at Hervorden, a town in Westphalia, under the patronage of Elizabeth, princess Palatine, the abbess of Hervorden; and being driven from that place, it removed to Altona, in 1672; and on the death of its founder in 1674, retired to the castle of Wiewert, in West Friesland: but it has long since become extinct. This sect was joined not only by several men of considerable learning, but also by that Minerva of the seventeenth century, the very learned lady of Utrecht, Anna Maria Schurmann. This little community did. not wish to be thought to differ from the Reformed, in regard to religious opinions and doctrines, so much as in manners and rules of discipline. For its lawgiver exhibited a rigorous and austere model of sanctity for the imitation of his followers; reconciled these two contradictory things, by maintaining that reason was opposed to religion; but yet, that we ought to believe in the religion contained in the New Testament Scriptures against the most evident and the most conclusive mathematical demonstrations. He must, therefore, have believed in a twofold truth, theological and mathematical; and have held that to be false in theology, which is true in philosophy. The best account of Bredenburg is given by the learned Jew, Isaac Orobio, in his Certamen philosophicum propugnatæ Veritatis divinæ et naturalis adversus Jo. Bredenburgü principia, ex quibus quod religio rationi repugnat, demonstrare nititur. This book, which contains Bredenburg's demonstrations of the doctrines of Spinoza, was first published, name Amsterd. 1703, 8vo, and then, Brussels, Besides those already named, see Simon Fred. Raes, Nachrichten vom Zustande der Mennoniten, p. 267, &c. and conceived, that not only the invisible church, but also the visible, ought to be a community of sanctified persons, earnestly striving after perfection in holiness. Several of his tracts are extant, which show him to have possessed a lively and ardent mind, but not well disciplined and polished; and as persons of such a character are easily betrayed by their natural temperament into errors and faults, I am not sure whether those witnesses are to be wholly disregarded, who charge his life and doctrine with many blemishes. 4 § 4. Nearly at the same time, Antoinette Bourignon de la Porte, a lady of Flanders, boasted that she was inspired of God, and instructed supernaturally, to restore the Christian religion, which had become extinct and lost among the disputes and contentions of the different sects. This woman, who possessed a voluble tongue, uncommonly ardent feelings, and an inexhaustible imagination, filled the provinces of Holland, and also Holstein (where she spent some years), with the fame of her flights of fancy; and she persuaded some among the learned, as well as the ignorant and unlearned, to believe her declarations. After various sufferings and conflicts, she died at Franeker in Friesland, in the year 1680. It would require a prophet and diviner to make out from her writings, which are numerous, a neat and consistent system of theology. For that divine light which guides persons of this character, never proceeds in a regular and methodical way; and it spreads a thick darkness before the minds of those who investigate truth, not by feeling, but by the understanding. Yet a reflecting person, who is versed in church history, may easily discover 4 See Jo. Möller's Cimbria Litterata, tom. iii. p. 35, &c.; and Isagoge ad Histor. Chersones. Cimbrica, pt. ii. cap. v. p. 125, &c. Add Godfrey Arnold's Kirchen- und Ketzer- historie, vol. i. pt. i. book xvii. ch. xxxi. p. 1186. Weismann's Hist. Eccl. Sæculi XVII. p. 927, and others. Concerning the two celebrated companions and colleagues of Labadie, Peter du Lignon and Peter Yvon, see Möller's Cimbria Litterata, tom. ii. p. 472, 1020. [Labadie exhibited through life the character of an indiscreet reformer. To lash the vices of the people, and to purge the churches of their offences against purity, was his great business. But it was his misfor tune always to get into difficulty. The that this woman, who had not full command of her reason, derived a large part of her oracles from the writings of the mystic doctors; and what she derived from these sources, the extravagance of her fancy made worse than it was before. Neglecting all the details of her system, the substance of it is, that religion consists in an internal emotion or sensation of the soul, and not in either knowledge or practice. Among her patrons, the most distinguished were, Christian Bartholomew de Cordt, a priest of the Oratory at Mechlin, a Jansenist, who died on the island of Nordstrand in Jutland; and Peter Poiret, a man of penetrating genius, and well versed in the Cartesian philosophy, who has clearly evinced, by his own example, that knowledge and ignorance, reason and superstition, are not so mutually repulsive that they cannot reside in the same breast, and by their united energies engender monstrous productions.7 § 5. Of the same, or at least similar views, the same plans, and the same general character, was Jane Leade, who, near the end of the century, blinded not only many of the common people in England, but also some of the better informed, by her visions, her prophecies, her promises, and her doctrines, and thus gave rise to the Philadelphian Society. For she believed in general, that all contentions among Christians would wholly cease, and that the church of Christ would become the only, the perfectly united, and the most beautiful church here on earth; provided all would commit their souls to the internal teacher, to be moulded, enlightened, and governed by Him, neglecting all other doctrines, precepts, and opinions. And she did not hesitate to give assurance, in the name of God, that such a church as her own imagination had conceived, would be established before the end of the world. And the honest woman might with more confidence give this assurance, as she fully believed ex 5 See Jo. Möller, who treats pressly and fully respecting her, in his Cimbria Litterata, tom. ii. p. 85, &c. and in his Introduct. in Historiam Chersonesi Cimbrica, pt. ii. p. 151, &c. Peter Bayle, Dictionnaire Hist. et Crit. tom. i. p. 639. Godf. Arnold, Kirchenund Ketzer- historie, vol. ii. p. 153, &c. and others. • See concerning him, Möller's Cimbria Litterata, tom. ii. p. 149. Poiret systematized and explained the wild and incoherent rhapsodies of Bourignon, in a great work, which he entitled, L'Economie divine, ou Système universel; first published in French, Amsterd. 1686, 7 vols. 8vo, and afterwards published in Latin. Respecting this celebrated mystic philosopher, whose various writings procured him notoriety, see the Bibliotheca Bremens. Theol. Philol. tom. iii. pt. i. p. 75. that her Philadelphian Society was that very church of Christ, in which alone the Holy Spirit resided and reigned. Her other discoveries, among which was the noted restoration of all things, need not be related. Leade was less fortunate than Bourignon in this respect, that she had not so eloquent and sagacious a counsellor as Poiret to plead her cause for her principal associates, John Pordage, a physician, and Thomas Bromley, were more distinguished for piety and a contemplative turn of mind, than for their power of reasoning and their eloquence. Pordage, in particular, even surpassed our Boehmen, whom he greatly admired, in obscurity; and instead of enlightening his readers, shocks them with his uncouth phraseology. 8 See Jo. Wolf. Jaeger, Historia sacra et civilis Sæculi XVII. decenn. x. p. 90, &c. Peter Poiret, Bibliotheca Mysticor. p. 161. 174. 283. 286, and others. [Jane Leade, who died 1704, in the 81st year of her age, spent nearly her whole life in reading and recommending the writings of Boehmen, and in penning down her own revelations and new results of divine truths. She was rich, and printed the whole at her own cost. Hence great numbers of her writings came before the public. The Philadelphian Society was established by her in 1697: the causes and reasons for its institution, she published in 1698. Her writings fill eight vo lumes. Pordage was first a preacher, but afterwards, being deposed for his fanaticism, he became a physician. He was the most zealous promoter of the Boehmist doctrines and of the Philadelphian Society in England. His principal work was his Divine and true Metaphysics, in 3 vols. 8vo. He also wrote a Theologia Mystica; and died in 1698.-Bromley was his pupil and adherent, and wrote much on the Bible. In Holland, one Lot Fisher, a physician, was a promoter of the Philadelphian Society; and he caused all the above works to be splendidly published in Dutch. Schl.] BRIEF SKETCH OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. § 1. Preface.-§ 2. Prosperous events of the church generally, and especially of the Popish church.—§ 3. The Jesuits and their institutions in China. - § 4. Protestant missions.-§ 5. Adverse events. Private enemies of Christianity.— § 6. Atheists: Deists. -§ 7. Romish church: the pontiffs. -§ 8. Prospects of peace between the Evangelical and the Papists frustrated.—§ 9. Intestine discords of the Romish church. Jansenist contests.-§ 10. Quesnel. The bull Unigenitus.-§ 11. Commotions from it in France.—§ 12. Supports of the Jansenists in France. Francis de Paris. -§ 13. State of the eastern church. - § 14. External state of the Lutheran church.-§ 15. Its internal state. -§ 16. Intes- ▸ tine foes.§ 17. The Herrenhutters. Zinzendorf.-§ 18. Cultivation of philosophy among the Lutherans.-§ 19. The Wertheim translation.—§ 20. Pietistic controversies. -§ 21. State of the Reformed Church.-§ 22. Projects for union between the Lutherans and the Reformed.-§ 23. State of the English Church. -§ 24. Various sects in England. Whitefield. -§ 25. State of the Dutch Church.-§ 26. Controversy in Switzerland respecting the Formula Consensus. — § 27. The Socinians. Arians. § 1. THE ecclesiastical history of the century now passing affords matter for a volume, rather than for a few pages; and may expect, among those who come after us, an ingenuous and faithful historian of its own. But that the present summary may not be thought incomplete, and that I myself, as well, perhaps, as others, may have a thread which would be useful in |