Jean, the founder of the sect of the Labadists, was born in 1610, at Bourg, in Guienne, and was educated at the Jesuit college of Bordeaux. Expelled from the Catholic church for the gross profligacy of his life, he joined the Protestants, and settling at Montauban, preached for eight years there with great success. His immorality again threw him upon the world, and he sought an asylum first at Orange and afterwards at Geneva. The assumed austerity and sanctity of his life gained him many followers, and when, in 1666, he exchanged Geneva for Middleburg, the number of his devotees was greatly increased. Refusing to acknowledge the synod of Dort, Labadie was formally deposed; and retiring to a little village near Amsterdam, he set up a printing press, and published many works of a half insane, half mystical import. His hesitating sin again drove him forth from this retreat, and taking refuge in Altona, he died there in 1674, at the age of sixty-four.

According to their own declaration in their "Confession," the Labadists did not entirely abandon the reformed cause, but still continued to hold the symbolical books. They were a sect of ascetic mystics, who wished reform of life rather than of doctrine. From their belief in the nature of church-membership they were compelled to form an isolated class, and naturally fell into the practice of having property in common. They rejected infant-baptism, and the observance of holy days. Although not guilty of the immoral practices often imputed to them, they fell to pieces in the first half of the 18th century. Hund, Pauli, and Calovius wrote against them. (See Histoire de la vie de J. de Labadie, Hague, 1670.)