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Born at Lubieniec, Poland, this man of many parts typifies in his roving life the fate of many of his fellow Brethren after the 1658 edict of expulsion. His parents were in the Faith, so was his wife. He went to the Kisielin academy in the Ukraine and in time became a brilliant linguist. For a brief two years he had care of the ecclesia in Czarkow near Krakow before the storm broke.

The remaining seventeen years of his life after 1658 were spent seeking asylum, propagating the Faith secretly, writing a history of the Polish Brethren, and acting as a sort of roving messenger, agent and correspondent plenipotentiary on Polish matters for several European governments.

He lived most of the time in Denmark, but at the end in Hamburg. There he aroused the furious hatred of the rabid Lutheran theologian and Hebraist Esdra Edzard who was "notorious for his intolerance and sarcasm".287 It was no surprise to some, therefore, when he died of poison -- a fate blamed by Edzard on his domestic staff. His passing was a sad blow as he was almost the last survivor of those who had lived through the 'golden age' of the Polish Brethren.260