A Curious History

accountable to a ClassisA regional governing body in the Reformed Church, composed of ministers and elders from a specific area. ordered by the Synod.

This Classis, convened in Amsterdam primarily on his account, did not have the honor of seeing his face, as he did not appear there under the pretext of illness or a migraine. He did, however, deign to present himself at the following Synod in Amsterdam in May 1667, where he first requested, by way of instruction, to be relieved from the article of the Synod of Heusden, claiming that he had not been legitimately summoned at that time. But the Synod judged by its 23rd article that the Synod of Heusden had been right to summon him to receive the necessary clarifications. It was in this same Synod of Amsterdam, as appears by Article 25, that he refused to sign the Confession of Faith, testifying that he had not yet read it—even though, having promised the Classis of Vlissingen original: "Flessingue" to sign it, he led them to believe he had already read it, or at least that he should have done so before accepting the vocationA formal call to serve as a minister in a specific church. of Middelburg, as the article states. He then feigned being ill, and thus incapable of reading it with all the mental application which he said he required to judge certain expressions; yet it is certain that at that very time he was employing all his mental application in conferring with Serarius, Comenius, Galenus, and other meddling spirits. Peter Serrarius, Jan Amos Comenius, and Galenus Abrahamsz were prominent 17th-century intellectuals and religious radicals known for their millenarian or mystical views. This proceeding revealed, first of all, that he was seeking

evasions to avoid signing the Confession of Faith, telling the deputies of the Synod sent to him that he desired to confer in writing with some members of the Synod body, to see by the following Synod what he might decide regarding this signature. Subsequently, he stated clearly that his conscience would not permit him (so tender did he claim it to be) to sign the Confession of Faith as it is drafted in the French language; but that he offered to sign the Latin Confession of the Netherlands after he had finished reading it. Whereupon the Synod, through a very particular indulgence, still had the kindness to allow him to present himself at the next Synod to sign the said French Confession and explain it using the Latin version for those expressions that seemed a bit harsh to him, granting him at the same time permission to discuss his scruples with the Synodal Churches. Furthermore, the Synod ordered the Synodal Church of Zeeland to obtain from him the signature of the Latin confession, meanwhile forbidding him from publishing anything against the said Confession, or from peddling in any way his opinion concerning the glorious reign of Jesus Christ original: "I. C." for Iesu Christi on earth. This refers to Labadie's millenarian belief that Christ would return to rule the earth for a thousand years before the final judgment.

But all these wise precautions of the Synod of Amsterdam were useless, and that was not the real hitch original: "encloüeure," literally "the shoeing-nail," an idiom for the crux of a problem. for the man who was planning his schismA formal split or division within a religious body., to stop at mere