called himself “Jean de Jesus Christ” and obtained popularity as a prophet, he came to Montauban, and there publicly abjured Roman Catholicism in October 1650.  Elected minister of the Protestant church of that town in 1652, he lived there for some years in great esteem among the Protestants, but in deadly feud with the Roman Catholics.  The schism was such that at last the magistrates had to banish him from the town as a disturber of the peace.  Then he had found refuge in Orange; and he was in some kind of temporary Protestant pastorship in that town of south-east France when there was this communication between him and Milton.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Article LABADIE in Nouvelle Biographie Generale (1859), with additional information from Article on him in the Biographie Universelle (edit. 1819), and from La Vie du Sieur Jean Labadie by Bolsec (Lyon, 1664), and some passages in Bayle’s Dictionary (e.g. in 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.