Ruiswick, Herman

Ruiswick, Herman, a Hollander who was found guilty of circulating grossly heretical doctrines of the Manichaean type at about the close of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. He was apprehended in 1499, but again liberated after he had recanted. He, however, renewed the effort to introduce his views, was accused and tried before the inquisitor Jacob of Hoogstraten, and died at the Hague by fire A.D. 1512. He was charged with denying the existence of created angels, the immortality of the human soul, and a hell, and with asserting that matter is coeternal with God. He taught that Christ was not the Son of God; that Moses did not receive the law from God; that the Bible in both Testaments is simply a fable and a series of falsehoods, etc. See Feller, Dict. Hist.; Ross [Alex.l, Der Welt Gottesdienste, p. 439; Allgem. Encyklopadie, by Ersch u. Gruber, s.v.