The Family of Love met with considerable controversy in Elizabethan England. This article examines a series of confessions given by members and ex-members of the group before Protestant authorities. Such testimonies are less straightforward than they seem. Specifically, Familists and their opponents used confessions as an opportunity to refine their religious identities. Both sides fought to establish themselves as simple, transparent Christians even as they indulged in the twists and turns of sixteenth-century polemics. Rather than dismissing such sources as distortions, this article explores the ideological diversity that results from the attempt to derive meaning from hostile attention.