Leutard orLeuthard, a French fanatic, flourished among the peasants of Chalons-sur-ilarne about A.D. 1000. He claimed the enjoyment of spiritual visions, and authority from on high for separation from his fam- ily and his iconoclastic idiosyncracies. He also, by like inspirations, became the opponent of many practices of the Church which had their authority in the sacred Scriptures of both the O. and N. T., and supjiorted his position likewise by the inspired word of (iod. The bishop of the diocese in which Leutliard flourished — Gebuin by name — treated him with perfect contempt, believing him insane, and, for want of opposition, few followers were found by Leuthard, who in des]iair de- stroyed himself by drowning.
Levellers or Radicals, a political and religious sect of fanatics, which arose in the army of Cromwell at the time of the difficulty between the Independents and the Long Parliament (1647), advocating entire civil and religious liberty. They were not only treated as trai- tors by the king, but persecuted also by Crdmwell as dangerous to the state. From one of their own works. The Leveller, o'r the Principles and Maxims conreming Govei-nment and Religion of those commonly called Lev- ellers (Lond. 1658), we see that their fundamental prin- ciples included, in politics, 1, the impartial, sovereign authority of the law ; 2, the legislative power of Parlia-
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ment; 3, absolute equality before the law; and, 4, the armini;' of the people in order to enable all to secure the enforcement of the laws, and also to protect their liber- ties. In religion they claimed, 1, absolute liberty of con- science, as true religion, with them, consisted in inward concurrence with revealed religion ; 2, freedom for every one to act according to the best of his knowledge, even if this knowl' dgc should be false — the government act- ing on the knowledge and conscience of the people through the ministers it appoints; 3, religion to be con- sidered under two aspects: one as the correct under- standing of revelation, and this is quite a private affair, in regard to which every one must stand or fall by him- self; the other is its effects as manifested in actions, and these are subject to the judgment of others, and es- jjccially of the authorities; 4, they condemned all strife on matters of faith and forms of worship, considering these as only outward signs of different degrees of spir- itual enlightening. This sect, like many others, disap- peared at the time of the Restoration. See Weingarten, Revuliitions Kirchen Enfjlands (Lpz. 18G8) ; Neale, Hist, o/'ike Purita)is (see Index, vol. ii. Harper's edition).
Lever, Thomas, an eminent English divine, was born in Lancashire in the early part of the IGth centur\-. He was ordained a Protestant minister in 1550. On the accession of IMary (1553) he retired to the Conti- nent. He afterwards dissented i'rom the Anglican Church from a partiality to Calvinism. He died in 1577. No man was more vehement in his sermons against the waste of Church revenues, and other pre- vailing corruptions of the court, which occasioned bis'"- op liidley to rank him with Latimer and Knox. Be- sides a number of sermons, he published a Meditation on tlie Lorde's Prayer (1551) : — Ccrtaijne Godly Exercises: — and a Treatise on the Danger from Synne, etc. (1571- 1575). See Allibone, Diet, of Brit, ami Ainer. Authors, Tol. ii, s. V. ; Thomas, Biog. Dictionary, s. v.
Le'vi (Heb. iei-i', "^ib, toreaihed [see below], being the same Heb. word also signifying " Levite ;" Sept, and N. T. AivL or Aivd), the name of several men.
1. Tlie third son of Jacob by his wife Leah. This, like most other names in the patriarchal history, was connected with the thoughts and feelings that gathered round the child's birth. As derived from tllb, to ticinc, and hence to adhere, it gave utterance to the hope of the mother that the affections of Iier husband, which had liitherto rested on the favored Rachel, would at last be drawn to her. " This time will my husband be joined (rt'12'^) unto me, because I have borne him three sons" ((ien. xxix, 34). B.C. 1917. The new-born child was to be a Koii'wi-iaQ fitfSaidjrijr (.losephus, Ant. i, 19, 8), a new link binding the parents to each other more closely than before. The same etymology is recognised, though with a higher significance, in Numb, xviii, 2 (^T2^). One fact only is recorded in which he appears jirominent. The sons of Jacob had come from Padan- Aram to Canaan with their father, and were with him '•at Shalem, a city of Shechem." Their sister Dinah went out " to see the daughters of the land" (Gen. xxxiv, 1 ). i. e. as the words probably indicate, and as Josephus distinctly states (A nt. i, 21), to be present at one of their great annual gatherings for some festival of nature-wor- ship, analogous to that which we meet with afterwards among the Midianites (Numb, xxv, 2). The license of the time or the absence of her natural guardians ex- posed her, though yet in earliest youth, to lust and out- rage. A stain was left, not only on lier, but on the hon- or of her kindred, which, according to the rough justice of the time, nothing but blood could wash out. The duty of extorting that revenge fell, as in the case of Am- noii and Tamar (2 Sam. xiii, 22), and in most other states of society in which polygamy has prevailed (com- pare, for the customs of modern Arabs, J. D. Michaelis, quoted by Kurtz, Hist, of Old Crenanf, i, § 82, p. 340), on the brothers rather than the father, just as, in the