In 1672 he became pastor of the French church at Annweiler in the duchy of Deux-Ponts. Here he became acquainted with Elisabeth, abbess of Herford, the granddaughter of James I of England and a noted mystic, with the Theologia Germanica, and with the writings of Antoinette Bourignon, which last supplied exactly what he wanted. The desire to make the acquaintance of this gifted woman took him to the Netherlands in 1676. He settled in Amsterdam, and published there in the following year his "Cogitationzs rationales de Deo, anima, et Malo", which gained him an immediate reputation for scholarship and philosophic insight. It is Cartesian in form; the Trinity is conceived in mathematical terms; all knowledge is to rest on evidence - but the end of this knowledge of God is practical, to lead distracted Christendom back to unity. The influence of Thomas à Kempis and Tauler is plainly visible.