§ 170.4. =Separatists of Immoral Tendency.=--One of the worst was the =Buttlar sect=, founded by Eva von Buttlar, a native of Hesse, who had married a French refugee, lived gaily for ten years at the court of Eisenach, and then joined the pietists and became a rigid separatist. Separated from her husband, she associated with the licentiate Winter, and founded a Philadelphian society at Allendorf in A.D. 1702, where the foulest immoralities were practised. Eva herself was reverenced as the door of paradise, the new Jerusalem, the mother of all, Sophia come from heaven, the new Eve, and the incarnation of the Spirit. Winter was the incarnation of the Father, and their son Appenfeller the incarnation of the Son. They pronounced marriage sinful; sensual lusts must be slain in spiritual communion, then even carnal association is holy. Eva lived with all the men of the sect in the most shameless adultery. So did also the other women of the community. Expelled from Allendorf after a stay of six weeks, they sought unsuccessfully to gain a footing in various places. At Cologne they went over to the Catholic church. Their immoralities reached their climax at Lüde near Pyrmont. Winter was sentenced to death in A.D. 1706, but was let off with scourging. Eva escaped the same punishment by flight, and continued her evil practices unchecked for another year. She afterwards returned to Altona, where with her followers leading outwardly an honourable life, she attached herself to the Lutheran church, and died, honoured and esteemed, in A.D. 1717.--In a similar way arose in A.D. 1739 the =Bordelum sect=, founded at Bordelum by the licentiates Borsenius and Bär; and the =Brüggeler sect=, at Brüggeler in Canton Bern, where in A.D. 1748 the brothers Kohler gave themselves out as the two witnesses (Rev. xi.). Of a like nature too was the =sect of Zionites= at Ronsdorf in the Duchy of Berg. Elias Eller, a manufacturer at Elberfeld, excited by mystical writings, married in A.D. 1725 a rich old widow, but soon found more pleasure in a handsome young lady, Anna von Buchel, who by a nervous sympathetic infection was driven into prophetic ecstasy. She proclaimed the speedy arrival of the millennium; Eller identified her with the mother of the man-child (Rev. xii. 1). When his wife had pined away through jealousy and neglect and died, he married Buchel. The first child she bore him was a girl, and the second, a boy, soon died. When a strong opposition arose in Elberfeld against the sect, he, along with his followers, founded Ronsdorf, as a New Zion, in A.D. 1737. The colony obtained civil rights, and Eller was made burgomaster. Anna having died in A.D. 1744, Eller gave his colony a new mother, and practised every manner of deceit and tyranny. After the infatuation had lasted a long time, the eyes of the Reformed pastor Schleiermacher, grandfather