o
was born at Delft in 1501. In 1530 he was severely punished for
obstructing a Catholic procession in his native town. In 1534 he joined
the Anabaptists, but soon left them to found a sect of his own. He seems
to have interpreted the whole of the Scripture allegorically;[15:1] and
to have maintained that as Moses had taught hope, and Christ had taught
faith, it was his mission to teach love. His teachings were propagated
in Holland by Henry Nicholas, and in England by one Christopher Vittel,
a joiner, who appears to have undertaken a missionary journey throughout
the country about the year 1560. According to Fuller,[16:1] in 1578,
the nineteenth year of the reign of Elizabeth, "The Family of Love began
now to grow so numerous, factious, and dangerous, that the Privy Council
thought fit to endeavour their suppression."

The most lucid account of the doctrines of this sect may be gained from
a beautifully printed little book, entitled _The Displaying of an
Horrible Sect of Gross and Wicked Heretics naming themselves the Family
of Love_, published the same year, 1578, and written by one I. R. (Jn.
Rogers), a bitter but fair-minded opponent of their heresies, a
Protestant, and a zealous defender of the Lutheran dogma of
justification by faith alone. In his Preface the author bewails "the
daily increase of this error," declaring that "in many shires of this
our country there are meetings and conventicles of this Family of Love."
Amongst those who have been converted, he tells us, were many who had
hitherto been "professors of Christ Jesus' gospel according to the
brightness thereof." He denounces Christopher Vittel, the joiner, as
"the only man that hath brought our simple people out of the plain ways
of the Lord our God," and complains how "he driveth the true sense of
the Holy Ghost into allegories," and contendeth that "otherwise to
interpret the Holy Scriptures is to stick to the letter." To the Family
of Love, he tells us, "Christ signifieth anointed." He continues, "I
pray you mark but this one thing in their teachings, how they drive the
true sense of the Holy Ghost into allegories. And when any text of Holy
Scriptures is alleged by any of God's children, they answer that we
little understand what is meant thereby; and then if they be pressed to
expound the place, by and by it is drawn into an allegory. For they take
not the creation of man at the first to be historical (according to the
letter), but mere allegorical