2. The Arminian controversy and the Synod of Dort
The Arminian controversy and the Synod of Dort If Lutheranism experienced its defining controversy in the period 1546–77, resulting in the Formula of Concord, then the equivalent controversy for the Reformed Churches revolved around Arminianism in the period 1603–19, resulting in the canons of Dort.26 Not that this quenched all controversy within the Reformed world; the next generation would see the far more global and protracted Amyraldian controversy (see section 3).
Amyraldianism, however, was an in-house quarrel among the heirs of Dort.
1. Jacobus Arminius The figure who sparked off the Arminian controversy, giving it its historic name, was Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609)—the Latinized form of his
Dutch name Jakob Hermanszoon. Born at Oudewater in the Dutch Republic's province of Utrecht, his early life was marked by tragedy. His father died during his infancy; while he was away in Marburg (southerncentral Germany) pursuing his education, Spanish troops sacked his native
Oudewater, massacring its inhabitants, including Arminius' mother, sister, and two brothers. This was in the early part of the long and bloody war fought by the Dutch for independence from Spain's empire in the Netherlands. A young orphaned Arminius had, however, already found a generous patron in the wealthy Dutch linguist and mathematician Rudolph
Snellius (1546–1613), who enabled the orphan to study at the Dutch Republic's Leyden University. Now supported by Amsterdam's merchant guild, Arminius spent a year studying theology in Geneva under Theodore
Beza. He continued his studies in Basel University, where his academic success was brilliant. Arminius finally returned to the Dutch Republic in 1587, and the following year was ordained a pastor in the Dutch Reformed
Church, serving a congregation in Amsterdam.
Arminius' doubts about the Reformed understanding of divine predestination and human freedom seem to have begun almost immediately after his ordination. We should not, however, see him as a lonely rebel against some overwhelming Dutch Calvinism; there had in fact always been an alternative outlook within Dutch Protestantism, taking its inspiration less from Calvin, and more from a strong tradition of Dutch humanism. This tradition had been exemplified supremely in Erasmus of Rotterdam, the "prince of humanists" who had done so much to prepare the way for the Reformation but not finally embraced it. Erasmus, of course, had famously defended a more positive view of human free will than Martin Luther's
Augustinian pessimism about the will's bondage to sin. This Erasmian humanist strain in Dutch Protestantism was still very much alive in Arminius' day; it was sceptical about the value of doctrinal theology beyond the basics of the Apostles' Creed, focusing instead on practical morality and a spirituality that stressed human freedom and dignity. Long before Arminius became a figure of contention, the Dutch Republic had already witnessed frictions between the Reformed Orthodoxy favoured by
most clergy, and the humanism preferred by some. But these had proved minor controversies compared to the storm Arminius would provoke.
The seeds of doubt were sown in Arminius' mind by one of these earlier disputes. It concerned the theological writings of the great Dutch Catholic humanist Dirk Coornhert (1522–90). A many-sided, many-talented thinker and statesman, Coornhert had been a key player in the original anti-Spanish revolt of William the Silent; he drafted William's 1566 manifesto, calling on all patriotic Dutchmen to join him in liberating their land from Spanish tyranny. Among other things, Coornhert dabbled in theology, where he showed himself a second Erasmus in advocating a concept of human free will that gave it virtual autonomy from divine grace. Coornhert expressed his Erasmian views in a critique of Theodore Beza's Calvinism. The ensuing controversy brought Arminius into the arena; he was asked in 1589 to write something in defence of Beza. In studying the issues, however,
Arminius found himself repelled by Beza's high supralapsarian views of predestination, and more inclined to sympathize with Coornhert's criticisms. So Arminius wrote nothing, but brooded on the questions
Coornhert had raised.
Time would fail us to analyze the complex development of Arminius' theology between the Coornhert controversy and Arminius' eventual appointment as professor of theology at Leyden University in 1603. By then, he had said enough to draw upon himself a widespread suspicion of unsoundness on predestination and related doctrines. The suspicions were well-founded; Arminius had by now abandoned the Reformed view. He seems to have been influenced in the late 1590s by the view of Roman
Catholic theologian Luis de Molina on human freedom, divine foreknowledge, and sufficient grace (see Chapter 6, section 4.2). However, the alternative to the customary Reformed view (itself rooted in Augustine) that Arminius constructed has very often been misunderstood or even caricatured by his critics. We can summarize it as follows. Arminius had come to deny that God's predestination of the saved was unconditional.
Predestination, he held, was in fact conditional on human faith: God elected to salvation those whom He foreknew would believe. Moreover, their choice to believe was not caused by God's monergistic or efficacious grace; it was rather a choice born of synergistic cooperation between the divine and the human wills.
On the other hand, Arminius did not deny the natural deadness and impotence of the human will in the sphere of salvation, as opponents have often wrongly claimed. His view was more subtle. He accepted that the fall of humankind in Adam had indeed enslaved the will to sin. However, he argued that God's grace had supernaturally restored a measure of liberty to the fallen will, enough to enable it to repent and believe if it so chose. This universal gift of enabling or sufficient grace he termed "prevenient grace"
(from the Latin for "going before"). He did not, therefore, base human freedom on the inborn or natural independence of the will, nor on superficial views of human depravity, but on divine grace universally bestowed to remedy the will's otherwise helpless bondage to sin.
2. The beginnings of controversy By now, Arminius had gained influential supporters both in the Dutch
Reformed Church and the government. His most eminent backer in the Church was Jan Uytenbogaert (1557–1644), pastor of the Walloon congregation in the Dutch capital, The Hague.27 Arminius and Uytenbogaert had studied theology together in Geneva and become close friends. The Hague's Walloon congregation, where Uytenbogaert now ministered, was the most politically important church in the land; it was here that the most powerful military figure in the Dutch Republic worshiped
—Prince Maurice of Nassau (1567–1625), head of the powerful aristocratic house of Orange, and son of the Dutch people's national hero,
William the Silent. (He is sometimes called Maurice of Orange.) Maurice, the captain-general of the Dutch army, made Uytenbogaert tutor to his own son. Not only Maurice, but many of the Dutch nobility were members of Uytenbogaert's congregation.
Arminius' most eminent backer in the Dutch government was Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547–1619), who held the supremely influential political office of "land's advocate of Holland". Holland was by far the largest and wealthiest province of the Dutch Republic, the whole Republic often simply being called "Holland". The land's advocate of Holland was the representative of Holland's nobility, and the virtual prime minister of the Dutch Republic. Oldenbarnevelt had played a central part in holding the various Dutch provinces together politically in their gruelling war with Spain.
It was with such supporters that Arminius secured the theology professorship at Leyden. Even so, he first had to satisfy the university's senior theology lecturer, Francis Gomarus (1563–1641), of his soundness at a meeting in The Hague. Gomarus was Reformed Orthodox of the strictest kind, and a man of immense learning; he was to be Arminius' chief opponent. At the meeting, however, Arminius' powerful supporters laid down conditions that favoured Arminius: he would not have to state his own views in general, but only respond to specific questions that Gomarus asked him. Arminius answered these questions without violating Gomarus' keen sense of Reformed correctness, and was duly appointed to teach at Leyden in 1603.
Within a year, Arminius and Gomarus were at war with each other.
Gomarus probably felt that Arminius had deceived him at the Hague meeting, which may explain the angry passion with which he now denounced his academic colleague. Leyden University became a theological gladiators' arena; soon Arminius' students were also being accused of taking their master's dubious teachings out into the churches. In a fruitless attempt to restore peace, the Dutch government became involved in the controversy; several times, Arminius and Gomarus had debates in the presence of the civil authorities, and once Arminius read out a statement of his beliefs before the states-general (the Dutch federal council representing its seven provinces). The magistrates tended to favour Arminius, partly because he gave a commanding position to civil authority in governing the Church (see below for more on the "Arminian" view of Church-state relations). A majority of the Dutch Reformed clergy, however, sided with Gomarus.
Long before the controversy reached any resolution, Arminius died of tuberculosis in 1609, at the relatively young age of 49. Most agree that he was a pious man, who sincerely desired to serve God and the Dutch
Reformed Church, and was peace-loving despite the many conflicts he became embroiled in. He was certainly a scholarly theologian, a clear thinker, a good preacher, and a talented debater. The one serious questionmark that has been placed over his integrity was his subscription to the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism, the Dutch Reformed
Church's two confessions of faith. Could Arminius honestly have failed to see the gulf between his own views and those taught in the confessions he had sworn to uphold? Perhaps an answer can be found in his lifelong advocacy of a broad tolerance in the Church for all views that did not affect the substance of the Gospel. He may have regarded the confessions as expressing what the majority believed, rather than as objective standards of truth. If so, he could then always plead that he respected majority opinion, as enshrined in the confessions, and would uphold the majority's right to believe as they did, while claiming toleration for his own views. (This explanation does not, however, fit entirely comfortably with his apparent insistence that his views did not in fact contradict the confessions.)
3. Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants Arminius' death removed the central figure around whom controversy had swirled. But it did not end the controversy. By now, there was a vocal party in the Dutch Reformed Church that sailed under the flag of Arminius. Jan
Uytenbogaert became their leader. Among the other "Arminians", the most three important were Conrad Vorstius, Simon Episcopius, and Hugo
Grotius.
Conrad Vorstius (1569–1622) succeeded Arminius as theology professor at Leyden; Gomarus was so disgusted by his appointment that he resigned, taking up a pastorate at Middelburg in the province of Zeeland, then moving to the Huguenot academy at Saumur in 1615 to teach theology.
Vorstius' views were far more radical than those of Arminius, verging on Socinianism; the Dutch government dismissed him in 1612, in order to appease Britain's King James, who in an outburst of orthodoxy demanded the sacking of so unsound a thinker from so prestigious a university as Leyden. Vorstius retired on full salary to the Dutch city of Gouda, where he poured out such a river of fierce polemical writings against Calvinism that even Uytenbogaert despaired of his ill-mannered aggressiveness. All was not lost, however, for the Arminian cause in Leyden; its backers got Simon
Episcopius (1583–1643) appointed to the post vacated by Gomarus.
Episcopius was a courteous man, a talented speaker, especially in debate, and would become the great systematizer of Arminian beliefs. He emphasized the centrality of a scholarly interpretation of Scripture, and the practical, non-speculative character of Christian faith. Erasmus rather than
Luther or Calvin was his model.
The last of the three, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), was one of the geniuses of the 17th century, still famous today for his contribution to the philosophy of international law. A protégé of Oldenbarnevelt, he developed into a scholar-politician of impressive dimensions. He held the important offices of advocate fiscal of Holland and Zeeland from 1607, and pensionary (mayor) of Rotterdam in 1613. His intellectual brilliance was displayed most richly in his legal classic, On the Law of War and Peace
(1625), and his apologetics classic, On the Truth of the Christian Religion (1627). The first laid the foundations of international law, based on the concept of natural law: a culture-transcending law that applied to all people and nations, and was universally accessible through human conscience. The
second was a landmark work in setting out the truth-claims of Christianity in the context of the plurality of world faiths (in the period we are examining other faiths were increasingly well known, owing to huge overseas expansion by European nations). Translated into Arabic, Persian, and Chinese, On the Truth of the Christian Religion was long studied by missionaries as a key text. From 1608, Grotius threw his potent political and intellectual weight behind the Arminian movement. Grotius also pioneered the "moral government" view of the atonement, which had significant popularity as an alternative to the "penal substitution" favoured by Lutheran and Reformed Orthodoxy. According to Grotius, the divine punishment of sin did not spring from any attribute of retributive justice in God, but from His loving concern to maintain good order in the moral universe. Sin upset the harmony and happiness of that universe, and must be deterred. Christ's death did not satisfy God's "personal" justice; it was a public exhibition of God's opposition to sin, demonstrating what all sin deserved, in order that God might pardon the penitent without fostering any illusions about sin's heinousness.
With such significant leadership, the Arminian party was emboldened after Arminius' death to publish a theological manifesto, the Remonstrance
(1610). This set out their distinctive beliefs, in opposition to Reformed Orthodoxy, in five points:
1. In the decree of election, God has purposed to save those whom He foreknows will believe and persevere in faith to the end.
2. Christ by His death has purchased salvation equally for all, but this salvation is enjoyed only through faith.
3. Fallen human beings are enslaved to sin, and have no innate power to think, will, or do anything spiritually good, unless they are first regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
4. Divine grace alone enables fallen sinners to think, will, or do anything good; yet this grace is always able to be resisted. The difference between the righteous and the unrighteous is that the former cooperate with grace, but the latter resist it.
5. Believers are given all the help of grace to persevere to the end; but whether a true believer can reject this grace, return to his sin, and be
for ever lost, is a question requiring further investigation from Scripture.
The third point may seem strange to modern-day Calvinists, as it basically affirms the "Calvinist" doctrine of total depravity! This warns us not to project current ideas back into a past controversy. The original Arminians believed in total depravity. Their belief was not that the human will had some natural autonomy unaffected by sin, but that God had supernaturally bestowed unmerited grace on humanity's impotent will, sufficient to enable each person to believe the Gospel and be saved.
The Remonstrance was drafted by Uytenbogaert, and signed by 41 pastors and two teachers of the Leyden state college for pastoral training.
The Arminians now became known as the Remonstrants. They submitted the document to the Dutch Republic's de facto prime minister,
Oldenbarnevelt, asking him to use his power to secure toleration for their beliefs. Feeling was now running high between the Remonstrants and their opponents. The civil authorities summoned both parties in March 1611 to The Hague; here the Reformed presented their response to the Remonstrance, known fittingly as the Counter-Remonstrance. From then onwards, the two quarrelling parties were known as the Remonstrants and the Counter-Remonstrants.
4. Religion and politics in the Dutch Republic It would be profoundly wrong to see this as a purely theological conflict. It was just as much political as theological, involving the thorny issue of Church-state relations. The Counter-Remonstrants stood for the principle that the Dutch Reformed Church must be independent of state control; the Remonstrants, however, advocated the subordination of Church to state. Jan
Uytenbogaert expressed this view clearly in 1610 in his Tract on the Function and Authority of a Higher Christian Government in Ecclesiastical
Affairs. He argued that supreme spiritual power belonged to the local civil governments of each Dutch province. It was their right and duty to appoint pastors, monitor preaching, determine forms of worship, and summon and control synods. Hugo Grotius said much the same in his Resolution for Peace in the Churches in 1614, emphasizing that the provincial governments had the power to outlaw controversial preaching. For Grotius, the only guarantee of social harmony in the Republic was a broad-based
Church, where all viewpoints were tolerated (as long as the Trinity was acknowledged), and the Christian magistrates silenced trouble-making preachers.
It is uncertain whether Uytenbogaert and his colleagues among the clergy adopted this Grotian view on pure principle, or whether it was more their way of currying support from the civil authorities against the CounterRemonstrant majority in the Church. Certainly most politicians were ready to back the Remonstrants, especially with so committed a Remonstrant as Oldenbarnevelt wielding power as land's advocate of Holland. With most of the magistrates on the Remonstrant side, and most of the clergy on the Counter-Remonstrant side, the struggle was intensely politicized. It also had a dimension of class warfare: the upper classes tended to be Remonstrant, the lower classes Counter-Remonstrant.
The controversy was also utterly entangled in disputes over the Republic's foreign policy. Oldenbarnevelt had negotiated a 12 year truce with Spain in 1609. Prince Maurice of Nassau, however, had opposed the truce; he believed that war with Catholic Spain was inevitable and should be prosecuted vigorously. Maurice was strongly supported by Calvinists in his pro-war policy. Oldenbarnevelt, however, frustrated all Maurice's attempts to renew the war. The growing political conflict between Oldenbarnevelt and Maurice thus became hopelessly embroiled with the
religious quarrel between Arminian Remonstrants and Calvinist CounterRemonstrants. The latter, in supporting Maurice's pro-war policy, were opposing Oldenbarnevelt both for his peace policy and his championship of the Remonstrants.
By 1617, these internal religious and political conflicts were beginning to tear the Dutch Republic apart. Literary warfare between Remonstrant and Counter-Remonstrant theology had reached fever pitch. Provincial governments prohibited Counter-Remonstrant clergy from preaching against the Remonstrants, and suspended or deposed some who disobeyed.
Significant numbers of the laity walked out of churches where the government had made it impossible for them to hear the preaching they desired; they now held separate meetings in houses, barns, and boats. Once again, however, the pro-Remonstrant authorities intervened, and confiscated these alternative meeting places. Oldenbarnvelt and Maurice each feared that the other was planning a coup against him. In July 1617, Maurice openly sided with the Counter-Remonstrants in the religious quarrel, by withdrawing from Uytenbogaert's Remonstrant church in The Hague, where he had worshiped for years, and joining a Counter-Remonstrant congregation. This was not owing to any theological conviction on Maurice's part; he had no real interest in theology, and he confessed, "I know nothing of predestination, whether it is green or whether it is blue."
This was a political decision. Maurice was putting himself at the head of the popular Calvinist opposition to Oldenbarnevelt and the Remonstrants in order to topple them from power.
Oldenbarnevelt must have sensed extreme danger in this public coalition between Maurice and the Counter-Remonstrants. To protect himself against the coup he feared Maurice was plotting, and give greater security to the Remonstrants, Oldenbarnevelt issued his famous "Sharp Resolution" in August 1617. It asserted that the provincial governments had supreme power in Church matters, and could recruit troops to defend Remonstrants against attacks from their opponents. Remonstrants were indeed now experiencing outbursts of popular violence against them, especially from the skilled manual workers of the Dutch cities. These people were suffering badly from Oldenbarnevelt's truce with Spain, because it meant that the Spanish Netherlands (bordering on the Republic) was flooding the country with inexpensive cloth. This in turn was causing low incomes and unemployment for Dutch Calvinist cloth-workers. It was easy for them to
vent their wrath on Remonstrants who were, after all, Oldenbarnevelt's allies. However, they also rioted against town councils that supported
Oldenbarnevelt. On one occasion they sacked the house of Simon Episcopius, the Remonstrant theology professor at Leyden, and chased his wife through the streets, calling her an "Arminian whore".
The Sharp Resolution brought the Dutch situation to boiling point. The provincial governments of Holland and Utrecht raised troops to shore up their power, as the Resolution had authorized them to do. Prince Maurice, however, saw this as a direct challenge to his military authority as captaingeneral of the Dutch army. There followed a year of intrigue and counterintrigue. The most important event in this tense period came in November
1617, when Maurice and the Counter-Remonstrants persuaded the statesgeneral, the Dutch Republic's federal council, to summon a general synod of the Dutch Reformed Church to settle the religious quarrel. Such a synod could result only in defeat for the Remonstrants; popular opinion in the Church had always favoured the Calvinism of the Counter-Remonstrants.
Holland, however—Oldenbarnevelt's stronghold, and the Republic's biggest and richest province—refused to go along with this decision. So did two other provinces where Oldenbarnevelt's policies held sway. It was clear that Remonstrant political power in Holland would have to be broken before the synod could go ahead.
Prince Maurice finally struck in July 1618. He decided to act with a strong show of legality rather than stage a naked coup; his opportunity lay in the Republic's federal council, the states-general. Although Holland was the Republic's most powerful province, there were seven provinces in total.
All seven had only a single vote each in the states-general. Maurice was able to take his stand on a crisis that had developed between the statesgeneral, where five of the provinces now supported the prince, and the provinces of Holland and Utrecht, which supported Oldenbarnevelt. The crisis hinged on whether supreme political authority lay with each province individually, or with the states-general as the country's federal council.
Holland had always held to the view that each province was a sovereign state, and could not be ultimately overruled by the states-general. But with Utrecht alone now supporting Holland, the states-general by a 5–2 majority took the view that as the Republic's federal body, it was the supreme authority in the land. It therefore decreed that Holland and Utrecht had acted beyond their lawful powers in raising troops without federal consent.
Then it gave Maurice the prize he sought—it authorized him to use the Dutch army to disarm the local troops in Holland and Utrecht.
The local troops were no match for Maurice's veteran army; Utrecht surrendered, and Oldenbarnevelt's power in Holland collapsed. He, Grotius, and several other leading Remonstrant politicians were arrested. Maurice purged Holland's "council of nobles", dismissing all Remonstrants and putting his own men in power. He did the same to Holland's town councils.
This was a political revolution which guaranteed that Maurice and his family (the house of Orange) would rule the Republic for the next 30 years.
Oldenbarnevelt and Grotius were at length tried for treason by a special political court, and found guilty. Oldenbarnevelt was executed in May
1619: a tragic fate for a 72 year old man who had spent his life serving the Dutch Republic, and done as much as anyone to secure its freedom from Spain. Grotius was imprisoned for life, but his wife managed to get him smuggled out of his cell in 1621, and he fled to France. There he was given refuge by King Louis XIII. It was during his stay in France that Grotius wrote his two masterworks, On the Law of War and Peace, and On the Truth of the Christian Religion. Never allowed to return to the Dutch
Republic, Grotius died in exile in 1645.
5. The Synod of Dort Meanwhile, Maurice and the states-general, having crushed Oldenbarnevelt and the Remonstrants politically, moved to resolve the religious issue too.
The general synod of the Dutch Reformed Church they had summoned back in November 1617 now finally met at Dort (or Dordrecht) in the south of Holland. It was composed of 56 ministers and elders, and 5 professors, with 18 political commissioners to report back to the states-general. Reformed theologians from across Europe were also invited to attend. This was to be more than a purely Dutch synod; it was to represent Reformed opinion worldwide. 26 delegates came from various German Reformed territories
(e.g. Heidelberg, Hesse, and Bremen), from Switzerland, and from Britain.
The British delegates were sent by King James, a devout Calvinist in matters of theology; the six delegates—five Englishmen and one Scot— included the distinguished theologian John Davenant (1572–1641), Bishop of Salisbury from 1621. All six were either Calvinists (like Davenant) or had Calvinist leanings. The French Reformed Church also commissioned four delegates to Dort, but King Louis XIII would not allow them to attend.
The Synod of Dort proved to be a landmark event in the history of the Reformed faith. Its membership was overwhelmingly opposed to Remonstrant theology. When a large Remonstrant delegation arrived at Dort, only 13 named by the synod were allowed to appear—and not as delegates, but as plaintiffs on trial for doctrinal error. They were led by Simon Episcopius, the theologian of Leyden University; their natural leader, Uytenbogaert, had fled to Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands.
Episcopius made a speech before the synod, pleading for a spirit of love and free discussion. Perhaps understandably, Dutch Calvinists were not very willing to listen, given the way many of them had been ill-treated by Remonstrant magistrates under Oldenbarnevelt's government. Episcopius and his friends were dismissed, while the synod hammered out its theological rejoinder to Remonstrant theology.
Since the Remonstrance had expressed Arminian theology in five points, the synod responded by working through these points in a series of "canons" and presenting a Reformed perspective on each point. Here is the origin of the so-called "Five Points of Calvinism": not a summary of Reformed theology, but simply Reformed theology's response to the five points of the Arminian Remonstrance on disputed matters concerning
salvation. (Reformed theology in the 16th and 17th centuries was far wider and richer than the "Five Points", and had other distinctive beliefs in relation to other controversies, e.g. its doctrine of the Lord's Supper in relation to Lutheranism.) We can summarize the synod's teaching thus:
1. Predestination is God's eternal purpose to give saving faith to some sinners out of the mass of fallen humanity. It is unconditional—not based on God's foreknowledge of anything in those chosen. (This first article takes the infralapsarian view: quite striking, considering that some leading Dutch theologians were supralapsarian, e.g. Francis
Gomarus. ) 2. The death of Christ is sufficient to save the whole of humanity, but by God's sovereign will it is effective in actually saving the elect, by enlivening them to a true, justifying, sanctifying, persevering faith.
3. The synod agreed with the third point of the Remonstrance—the spiritual inability of the fallen human will apart from divine grace.
However… 4. The synod rejected the Remonstrant view that grace is always resistible. On the contrary, the grace that regenerates is sovereignly efficacious.
5. This grace also ensures that the elect will persevere to the end and enter glory at last. True saving faith can never be entirely lost; and a person can attain an assurance that he or she has this faith, and will therefore persevere.
(The canons of Dort are actually far longer and much more detailed than this. The above is only a very short précis.)
The synod concluded its business on May 9th 1619. Its canons now became authoritative in the Dutch Reformed Church, alongside the Belgic
Confession and Heidelberg Catechism (known collectively as the Three Forms of Unity). Some 190 pastors were deposed for refusing to subscribe to the canons—Arminianism was purged out of the ranks of the clergy.
(There were around 1,100 pastors altogether in the Dutch Reformed Church at that time.) Of the 190 deposed, 80 were banished, 70 allowed to remain in the Dutch Republic but deprived of their ministries, while 40 eventually conformed to the canons and were restored. Of the other Reformed
Churches, only the French adopted Dort's canons as a binding confession of faith (in 1620); nonetheless, the canons were universally regarded by Reformed theologians as summing up orthodox teaching against Arminianism. This made the canons of Dort the nearest Reformed equivalent to Lutheranism's Formula of Concord.
One other thing the synod did: it set in motion a project for a new translation of the Bible into Dutch. Previous Dutch Bibles had not been translated from the original Hebrew or Greek, but from other existing translations (e.g. the Latin Vulgate). The new translation was to be directly from Hebrew and Greek. The project was completed in 1635; the statesgeneral issued it with official sanction in 1637. It was known as the Statenvertaling ("States Translation") or Statenbijbel ("States Bible"). The new translation—the "authorized version" of the Dutch Reformed Church
—was to mould the Dutch language, much as Luther's Bible had moulded German. For the next 300 years it would be the commonly accepted Bible among all Dutch Protestants.
The Dutch Republic's political and religious crisis, which had pushed it to the edge of civil war, had been averted. This enabled a united nation, under the leadership of Prince Maurice and the house of Orange, to face renewed conflict with Spain in 1621: an exhausting struggle not concluded until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.28
With Remonstrant pastors either banished from the Republic or silenced in 1619, congregations that remained loyal to Remonstrant theology were harassed in various ways. Any new pastors they appointed were liable to be imprisoned. The persecution, however, ended on the death of Prince
Maurice in 1625; his successor and brother, Frederick Henry (Prince of Orange, and Dutch captain-general, from 1625 to 1647) was more tolerant than Maurice. He allowed the exiled pastors to return. Simon Episcopius came back in 1626 to pastor a Remonstrant church in Amsterdam; he then became head of a Remonstrant theology college, also in Amsterdam, founded in 1630. Uytenbogaert too returned in 1626 and resumed preaching in The Hague. There were some 40 Remonstrant congregations, mostly in south Holland. The movement endured, and was finally given legal recognition in 1795.