§ 161.1. Preliminaries of the Arminian Controversy.—In the Confessio Belgica of A.D. 1562 the Protestant Netherlands had already a strictly Calvinistic symbol, but Calvinism had not thoroughly permeated the church doctrine and constitution. There were more opponents than supporters of the doctrine of predestination, and a Melanchthonian-synergistic (§ 141, 7), or even an Erasmian-semipelagian, (§ 125, 3) doctrine, of the freedom of the will and the efficacy of grace, was more frequently taught and preached than the Augustinian-Calvinistic doctrine. So also Zwingli’s view of the relation of church and state was in much greater favour than the Calvinistic Presbyterial church government with its terrorist discipline. But the return of the exiles in A.D. 1572, who had adopted strict Calvinistic views in East Friesland and on the Lower German Rhine, led to the adoption of a purely Calvinistic creed and constitution. The keenest opponent of this movement was Coornhert, notary and secretary for the city of Haarlem, who combated Calvinism in numerous writings, and depreciated doctrine generally in the interests of practical living Christianity. Political as well as religious sympathies were enlisted in favour of this freer ecclesiastical tendency. The Dutch War of Independence was a struggle for religious freedom against Spanish Catholic fanaticism. The young republic therefore became the first home of religious toleration, which was scarcely reconcilable with a strict and exclusive Calvinism.—Meanwhile within the Calvinistic church a controversy arose, which divided its adherents in the Netherlands into two parties. In opposition to the strict Calvinists, who as supralapsarians held that the fall itself was included in the eternal counsels of God, there arose the milder infralapsarians, who made predestination come in after the fall, which was not predestinated but only foreseen by God.

§ 161.2. The Arminian Controversy.—In A.D. 1588, James Arminius (born A.D. 1560), a pupil of Beza, but a declared adherent of the Ramist philosophy (§ 143, 6), was appointed pastor in Amsterdam, and ordered by the magistrates to controvert Coornhert’s universalism and the infralapsarianism of the ministers of Delft. He therefore studied Coornhert’s writings, and by them was shaken in his earlier beliefs. This was shown first in certain sermons on passages from Romans, which made him suspected of Pelagianism. In A.D. 1603 he was made theological professor of Leyden, where he found a bitter opponent in his supralapsarian colleague, Francis Gomarus. From the class-rooms the controversy spread to the pulpits, and even into domestic circles. A public disputation in A.D. 1608, led to no pacific result, and Arminius continued involved in controversies till his death in A.D. 1609. Although decidedly inclined toward universalism, he had directed his polemic mainly against supralapsarianism, as making God himself the author of sin. But his followers went beyond these limits. When denounced by the Gomarists as Pelagians, they addressed to the provincial parliament of Holland and West Friesland, in A.D. 1610, a remonstrance, which in five articles repudiates supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, and the doctrines of the irresistibility of grace, and of the impossibility of the elect finally falling away from it, and boldly asserts the universality of grace. They were hence called Remonstrants and their opponents Contraremonstrants. Parliament, favourably inclined toward the Arminians, pronounced the difference non-fundamental, and enjoined peace. When Vorstius, who was practically a Socinian, was appointed successor to Arminius, Gomarus charged the Remonstrants with Socinianism. Their ablest theological representative was Simon Episcopius, who succeeded Gomarus at Leyden in A.D. 1612, supported by the distinguished statesman, Oldenbarneveldt, and the great jurist, humanist, and theologian, Hugo Grotius of Rotterdam. Maurice of Orange, too, for a long time sided with them, but in A.D. 1617 formally went over to the other party, whose well-knit unity, strict discipline, and rigorous energy commended them to him as the fittest associates in his struggle for absolute monarchy. The republican-Arminian party was conquered, Oldenbarneveldt being executed in 1619, Grotius escaping by his wife’s strategem. The Synod of Dort was convened for the purpose of settling doctrinal disputes. It held 154 sessions, from Nov. 13th, 1618, to May 9th, 1619. Invitations were accepted by twenty-eight theologians from England, Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland. Brandenburg took no part in it (§ 154, 3), and French theologians were refused permission to go. Episcopius presented a clear and comprehensive apology for the Remonstrants, and bravely defended their cause before the synod. Refusing to submit to the decisions of the synod, they were at the fifty-seventh session expelled, and then excommunicated and deprived of all ecclesiastical offices. The Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession were unanimously adopted as the creed and manual of orthodox teaching. In the discussion of the five controverted points, the opposition of the Anglican and German delegates prevented any open and manifest insertion of supralapsarian theses, so that the synodal canons set forth only an essentially infralapsarian theory of predestination.—Remonstrant teachers were now expelled from most of the states of the union. Only after Maurice’s death in A.D. 1625 did they venture to return, and in A.D. 1630 they were allowed by statute to erect churches and schools in all the states. A theological seminary at Amsterdam, presided over by Episcopius till his death, in A.D. 1643, rose to be a famous seat of learning and nursery of liberal studies. The number of congregations, however, remained small, and their importance in church history consists rather in the development of an independent church life than in the revival of a semipelagian and rationalistic type of doctrine.472

§ 161.3. Consequences of the Arminian Controversy.—The Dort decrees were not accepted in Brandenburg, Hesse, and Bremen, where a moderate Calvinism continued to prevail. In England and Scotland the Presbyterians enthusiastically approved of the decrees, whereas the Episcopalians repudiated them, and, rushing to the other extreme of latitudinarianism, often showed lukewarm indifferentism in the way in which they distinguished articles of faith as essential and non-essential. The worthiest of the latitudinarians of this age was Chillingworth, who sought an escape from the contentions of theologians in the Catholic church, but soon returned to Protestantism, seeking and finding peace in God’s word alone. Archbishop Tillotson was a famous pulpit orator, and Gilbert Burnet, who died A.D. 1715, was author of a “History of the English Reformation.” In the French Reformed church, where generally strict Calvinism prevailed, Amyrault of Saumur, who died A.D. 1664, taught a universalismus hypotheticus, according to which God by a decretum universale et hypotheticum destined all men to salvation through Jesus Christ, even the heathen, on the ground of a fides implicita. The only condition is that they believe, and for this all the means are afforded in gratia resistibilis, while by a decretum absolutum et speciale only to elect persons is granted the gratia irresistibilis. The synods of Alençon, A.D. 1637, and Charenton, A.D. 1644, supported by Blondel, Daillé, and Claude, declared these doctrines allowable; but Du Moulin of Sedan, Rivetus and Spanheim of Leyden, Maresius of Groningen [Gröningen], and others, offered violent opposition. Amyrault’s colleague, De la Place, or Placæus, who died A.D. 1655, went still further, repudiating the unconditional imputation of Adam’s sin, and representing original sin simply as an evil which becomes guilt only as our own actual transgression. The synods just named condemned this doctrine. Somewhat later Claude Pajon of Saumur, who died A.D. 1685, roused a bitter discussion about the universality of grace, by maintaining that in conversion divine providence wrought only through the circumstances of the life, and the Holy Spirit through the word of God. Several French synods condemned this doctrine, and affirmed an immediate as well as a mediate operation of the Spirit and providence.—Genuine Calvinism was best represented in Switzerland, as finally expressed in the Formula Consensus Helvetica of Heidegger of Zürich, adopted in A.D. 1675 by most of the cantons. It was, like the Formula Concordiæ, a manual of doctrine rather than a confession. In opposition to Amyrault and De la Place, it set forth a strict theory of predestination and original sin, and maintained with the Buxtorfs, against Cappellus of Saumur, the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points.

§ 161.4. The Cocceian and Cartesian Controversies.—If not the founder, certainly the most distinguished representative in the Netherlands of that scholasticism which sought to expound and defend orthodoxy, was Voetius, who died A.D. 1676, from A.D. 1607 pastor in various places, and from A.D. 1634 professor at Utrecht. A completely different course was pursued by Cocceius of Bremen, who died A.D. 1669, professor at Franeker in A.D. 1636, and at Leyden in A.D. 1650. The famous Zürich theologian, Bullinger (§ 138, 7), had in his “Compend. Rel. Chr.” of A.D. 1556, viewed the whole doctrine of saving truth from the point of view of a covenant of grace between God and man; and this idea was afterwards carried out by Olevianus of Heidelberg (§ 144, 1) in his “De Substantia Fœderis,” of A.D. 1585. This became the favourite method of distribution of doctrine in the whole German Reformed church. In the Dutch church it was regarded as quite unobjectionable. In England it was adopted in the Westminster Confession of A.D. 1648 (§ 155, 1), and in Switzerland in A.D. 1675, in the Formula Consensus. Cocceius is therefore not the founder of the federal theology. He simply gave it a new and independent development, and freed it from the trammels of scholastic dogmatics. He distinguished a twofold covenant of God with man: the fœdus operum s. naturæ before, and the fœdus gratiæ after the fall. He then subdivided the covenant of grace into three economies: before the law until Moses; under the law until Christ; and after the law in the Christian church. The history of the kingdom of God in the Christian era was arranged in seven periods, corresponding to the seven apocalyptic epistles, trumpets, and seals. In his treatment of his theme, he repudiated philosophy, scholasticism, and tradition, and held simply by Scripture. He is thus the founder of a purely biblical theology. He attached himself as closely as possible to the prevailing predestinationist orthodoxy, but only externally. In his view the sacred history in its various epochs adjusted itself to the needs of human personality, and to the growing capacity for appropriating it. Hence it was not the idea of election, but that of grace, that prevailed in his system. Christ is the centre of all history, spiritual, ecclesiastical, and civil; and so everything in Scripture, history, doctrine, and prophecy, necessarily and immediately stands related to him. The O.T. prophecies and types point to the Christ that was to come in the flesh, and all history after Christ points to his second coming; and O. and N.T. give an outline of ecclesiastical and civil history down to the end of time. Thus typology formed the basis of the Cocceian theology. In exegesis, however, Cocceius avoided all arbitrary allegorizing. It was with him an axiom in hermeneutics, Id significan verba, quod significare possunt in integra oratione, sic ut omnino inter se conveniant. Yet his typology led him, and still more many of his adherents, into fantastic exegetical errors in the prophetic treatment of the seven apocalyptic periods.

§ 161.5. A controversy, occasioned by Cocceius’ statement, in his commentary on Hebrews in A.D. 1658, that the Sabbath, as enjoined by the O.T. ceremonial law, was no longer binding, was stopped in A.D. 1659 by a State prohibition. Voetius had not taken part in it. But when Cocceius, in A.D. 1665, taught from Romans iii. 25, that believers under the law had not full “ἄφεσις,” only a “πάρεσις,” he felt obliged to enter the lists against this “Socinian” heresy. The controversy soon spread to other doctrines of Cocceius and his followers, and soon the whole populace seemed divided into Voetians and Cocceians (§ 162, 5). The one hurled offensive epithets at the other. The Orange political party sought and obtained the favour of the Voetians, as before they had that of the Gomarists; while the liberal republican party coalesced with the Cocceians. Philosophical questions next came to be mixed up in the discussion. The philosophy of the French Catholic Descartes (§ 164, 1), settled in A.D. 1629 in Amsterdam, had gained ground in the Netherlands. It had indeed no connexion with Christianity or church, and its theological friends wished only to have it recognised as a formal branch of study. But its fundamental principle, that all true knowledge starts from doubt, appeared to the representatives of orthodoxy as threatening the church with serious danger. Even in A.D. 1643 Voetius opposed it, and mainly in consequence of his polemic, the States General, in A.D. 1656, forbad it being taught in the universities. Their common opposition to scholasticism, however, brought Cocceians and Cartesians more closely to one another. Theology now became influenced by Cartesianism. Roëll, professor at Franeker and Utrecht, who died A.D. 1718, taught that the divinity of the Scriptures must be proved to the reason, since the testimonium Spir. s. internum is limited to those who already believe, rejected the doctrine of the imputation of original sin, the doctrine that death is for believers the punishment of sin, and the application of the idea of eternal “generation” to the Logos, to whom the predicate of sonship belongs only in regard to the decree of redemption and incarnation. Another zealous Cartesian, Balth. Bekker, not only repudiated the superstitions of the age about witchcraft (§ 117, 4), but also denied the existence of the devil and demons. The Cocceians were in no way responsible for such extravagances, but their opponents sought to make them chargeable for these. The stadtholder, William III., at last issued an order, in A.D. 1694, which checked for a time the violence of the strife.

§ 161.6. Theological Literature.—Biblical oriental philology flourished in the Reformed church of this age. Drusius of Franeker, who died A.D. 1616, was the greatest Old Testament exegete of his day. The two Buxtorfs of Basel, the father died A.D. 1629, the son A.D. 1664, the greatest Christian rabbinical scholars, wrote Hebrew and Chaldee grammars, lexicons, and concordances, and maintained the antiquity and even inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points against Cappellus of Saumur. Hottinger of Zürich, who died A.D. 1667, vied with both in his knowledge of oriental literature and languages, and wrote extensively on biblical philology, and besides found time to write a comprehensive and learned church history. Cocceius, too, occupies a respectable place among Hebrew lexicographers. In England, both before and after the Restoration, scholarship was found, not among the controversial Puritans, but among the Episcopal clergy. Brian Walton, who died A.D. 1661, aided by the English scholars, issued an edition of the “London Polyglott” in six vols., in A.D. 1657, which, in completeness of material and apparatus, as well as in careful textual criticism, leaves earlier editions far behind. Edm. Castellus of Cambridge in A.D. 1669 published his celebrated “Lexicon Heptaglottum.” The Elzevir printing-house at Amsterdam and Leyden, boldly assuming the prerogatives of the whole body of theological scholars, issued a textus receptus of the N.T. in A.D. 1624. The best established exegetical results of earlier times were collected by Pearson in his great compendium, the “Critici Sacri,” nine vols. fol., London, 1660; and Matthew Pool in his “Synopsis Criticorum,” five vols. fol., London, 1669. Among the exegetes of this time the brothers, J. Cappellus of Sedan, who died A.D. 1624, and Louis Cappellus II. of Saumur, who died A.D. 1658, were distinguished for their linguistic knowledge and liberal criticism. Pococke of Oxford and Lightfoot of Cambridge were specially eminent orientalists. Cocceius wrote commentaries on almost all the books of Scripture, and his scholar Vitringa of Franeker, who died A.D. 1716, gained great reputation by his expositions of Isaiah and the Apocalypse. Among the Arminians the famous statesman Grotius, who died A.D. 1645, was the greatest master of grammatico-historical exposition in the century, and illustrated Scripture from classical literature and philology. The Reformed church too gave brilliant contributions to biblical archæology and history. John Selden wrote “De Syndriis Vett. Heb.,” “De diis Syris,” etc. Goodwin wrote “Moses and Aaron.” Ussher wrote “Annales V. et N.T.” Spencer wrote “De Legibus Heb.” The Frenchman Bochart, in his “Hierozoicon” and “Phaleg,” made admirable contributions to the natural history and geography of the Bible.

§ 161.7. Dogmatic theology was cultivated mainly in the Netherlands. Maccovius, a Pole, who died A.D. 1644, a professor at Franeker, introduced the scholastic method into Reformed dogmatics. The Synod of Dort cleared him of the charge of heresy made against him by Amesius, but condemned his method. Yet it soon came into very general use. Its chief representatives were Maresius of Groningen [Gröningen], Voetius and Mastricht of Utrecht, Hoornbeck [Hoornbeeck] of Leyden, and the German Wendelin, rector of Zerbst. Among the Cocceians the most distinguished were Heidanus of Leyden, Alting of Groningen [Gröningen], and, above all, Hermann Witsius of Franeker, whose “Economy of the Covenants” is written in a conciliatory spirit. The most distinguished Arminian dogmatist after Episcopius was Phil. Limborch of Amsterdam, who died A.D. 1712, in high repute also as an apologist, exegete, and historian. The greatest dogmatist of the Anglican church was Pearson, who died A.D. 1686, author of “An Exposition of the Creed.” The Frenchman Peyrerius obtained great notoriety from his statement, founded on Romans v. 12, that Adam was merely the ancestor of the Jews (Gen. ii. 7), while the Gentiles were of pre-Adamite origin (Gen. i. 26), and also by maintaining that the flood had been only partial. He gained release from prison by joining the Catholic church and recanted, but still held by his earlier views.—Ethics, consisting hitherto of little more than an exposition of the decalogue, was raised by Amyrault into an independent science. Amesius dealt with cases of conscience. Grotius, in his “De Veritate Relig. Chr.” and Abbadie, French pastor at Berlin, and afterwards in London, who died A.D. 1727, in his “Vérité de la Rel. Chrét.,” distinguished themselves as apologists. Claude and Jurieu gained high reputation as controversialists against Catholicism and its persecution of the Huguenots.—The Reformed church also in the interests of polemics pursued historical studies. Hottinger of Zürich, Spanheim of Leyden, Sam. Basnage of Zütpfen, and Jac. Basnage of the Hague, produced general church histories. Among the numerous historical monographs the most important are Hospinian’s “De Templis,” “De Monachis,” “De Festis,” “Hist. Sacramentaria,” “Historia Jesuitica;” Blondel’s “Ps.-Isidorus,” “De la Primauté de l’Egl.,” “Question si une Femme a été Assisse au Siège Papal” (§ 82, 6), “Apologia sent. Hieron. de Presbyt.” Also Daillé of Saumur on the non-genuineness of the “Apostolic Constitutions” and the Ps.-Dionysian writings, and his “De Usu Patrum” in opposition to Cave’s Catholicizing over-estimation of the Fathers. We have also the English scholar Ussher, who died A.D. 1656, “Brit. Ecclesiarum Antiquitates;” H. Dodwell, who died A.D. 1711, “Diss. Cyprianicæ,” etc.; Wm. Cave, who died A.D. 1713, “Hist. of App. and Fathers,” “Scriptorum Ecclst. Hist. Literaria,” etc.—Special mention should be made of Eisenmenger, professor of oriental languages at Heidelberg. In his “Entdecktes Judenthum,” two vols. quarto, moved by the over-bearing arrogance of the Jews of his day, he made an immense collection of absurdities and blasphemies of rabbinical theology from Jewish writings. At his own expense he printed 2,000 copies; for these the Jews offered him 12,000 florins, but he demanded 30,000. They now persuaded the court at Venice to confiscate them before a single copy was sold. Eisenmenger died in A.D. 1704, and his heirs vainly sought to have the copies of his work given up to them. Even the appeal of Frederick I. of Prussia was refused. Only when the king had resolved, in A.D. 1711, at his own expense to publish an edition from one copy that had escaped confiscation, was the Frankfort edition at last given back.

§ 161.8. The Apocrypha Controversy (§ 136, 4).—In A.D. 1520 Carlstadt raised the question of the books found only in the LXX., and answered it in the style of Jerome (§ 59, 1). Luther gave them in his translation as an appendix to the O.T. with the title “Apocrypha, i.e. Books, not indeed of Holy Scripture, but useful and worthy to be read.” Reformed confessions took up the same position. The Belgic Confession agreed indeed that these books should be read in church, and proof passages taken from them, in so far as they were in accord with the canonical Scriptures. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer gives readings from these books. On the other hand, although at the Synod of Dort the proposal to remove at least the apocryphal books of Ezra or Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Bel and the Dragon, was indeed rejected, it was ordered that in future all apocryphal books should be printed in smaller type than the canonical books, should be separately paged, with a special title, and with a preface and marginal notes where necessary. Their exclusion from all editions of the Bible was first insisted on by English and Scotch Puritans. This example was followed by the French, but not by the German, Swiss, and Dutch Reformed churches.—Continuation, § 182, 4.