JOHN, a famous French enthusiast, son of John Charles Labadie, governor of Bourges and gentleman in ordinary of the bedchamber to the French king, was born in 1610. He entered young into the Jesuit college at Bordeaux; which, by his own account, he afterwards quitted, but by other accounts was expelled for his peculiar notions, and for hypocrisy. He became a popular preacher; but being repeatedly detected in working upon female devotees with spiritual instructions for carnal purposes, his loss of character among the Catholics drove him among the Protestants. A reformed Jesuit being thought a great acquisition, he was precipitately accepted as a pastor at Montauban, where he officiated for eight years; but, attempting the chastity of a young lady whom he could not convert to his purpose, and quarrelling with the Catholic priest about the right of interring a dead body, he was at length banished that place. The story of his affair with the lady, as related by Mr Bayle, may here be given as a specimen of his ministry. Having directed this damsel to the spiritual life, which he made to consist in internal recollection and mental prayer, he gave her out a certain point of meditation; and having strongly recommended it to her to apply herself entirely for some hours to such an important object, he went up to her when he believed her to be at the height of her recollection, and put his hand into her breast. She gave him a hasty repulse, expressed a great deal of surprise at the proceeding, and was even preparing to rebuke him, when he, without being in the least disconcerted, and with a devout air, prevented her thus: "I see plainly, my child, that you are at a great distance from perfection; acknowledge your weakness with a humble spirit; ask forgiveness of God for your having given so little attention to the mysteries upon which you ought to have meditated. Had you bestowed all necessary attention upon these things, you would not have been sensible of what was doing about your breast. But you are too much attached to sense, so little concerned with the Godhead, that you were not a moment in discovering that I had touched you. I wanted to try whether your fervency in prayer had raised you above the material world, and united you with the Sovereign Being, the living source of immortality and of a spiritual state; and I see, to my great grief, that you have made very small progress, and that you only creep on the ground. May this, my child, make you ashamed, and for the future move you to perform the duties of mental prayer better than you have hitherto done." The young lady, who had as much good sense as virtue, was no less provoked at these words than at the bold actions of her ghostly instructor; and could never afterwards bear the name of such a holy father. Labadie being driven out of Montauban, went to seek an asylum at Orange; but not finding himself so safe there as he imagined, he withdrew privately to Geneva, where he imposed on the people by his devout preaching and carriage; and from thence was invited to Middleburg, where his spirituality made him and his followers be considered as so many saints, distinguished by the name of Labadists. They increased so much, that he excited the attention of the other churches, whose authority he disputed, till he was formally deposed by the synod of Dort. Instead of obeying, he procured a tumultuous support from a crowd of his devotees; and at length formed a little settlement between Utrecht and Amsterdam, where he erected a printing press, which sent forth many of his works. Here he was betrayed by some deserters, who exposed his private life, and informed the public of his familiarities with his female disciples, under pretence of uniting them more particularly to God; and was finally obliged to retire to Altena in Holstein, where he died in 1674.