A survey of the spiritual antichrist opening the secrets of familism and antinomianism in…A survey of the spirituall antichrist opening the secrets of familisme and antinomianisme in…

CHAP. IX. Of Henry Nicholas, and older Familists and Antinomians.¹

1. 1The birth and qualities of Henry Nicholas the father of the Family of Love. H.N. Epistle to the two daughters of Warwick.The birth and qualities of Henry Nicholas the father of the Familie of Love. H.N. Epistle to the two daughters of Warwicke.

Henry Nicholas was borne at Amsterdam as some think, he spread his heresy a little after David George, about the year 1556 he was an ignorant, foolish man, a crafty hypocrite, had a sort of deceiving violence in his smooth eloquence of love. he calleth himself The first illuminate Elder of the Family of Love, was at the beginning austere, rigged, and fasted, waked divers nights, and prayed and praised, spread his errors through Holland, and Lower Germany pretended visions, and conferences with the Angels from whom he had his way of exponing scriptures by allegories, but turned afterward, loose and vain; he came over to England and spread his foul heresies, and seduced a number of Artificers, and silly women, and wrote an Epistle to two daughters of Warwick, dissuading them from regeneration by the word of God, read or preached, and called that regeneration Ceremonial, •lementish and false and laboured to persuade the maids to a spiritual new birth, by the Spirit and internal word, and did forbid suffering for the truth▪ or confessing of Christ to the death, before men, and exponed the laying down of the life for Christ ▪ of the mortifying the body of sin: he had his errors from the Antitrinitarians and denied Christ to be God. This Epistle was answered and refuted by H. Ainsworth, he wrote a Book of Documental sentences, another called Evangelium regni. The Gospel and joyful message of the Kingdom•, his doctrine and that of David Georgius ⟨p. 56⟩