itself, is this: (1) a regular and accurate debate on the matters in controversy, (2) mature consultation concerning them,

regulate their conduct, with regard to sitting, voting, and presiding, according to the method established and observed in the meetings of their High Mightinesses; that each of them should preside a week by rotation; that, in the examination and inquiry into matters, they should have not only a deliberative but a decisive vote; and, [as a specimen of true Dutch thrift,] that all adjournments, recesses, or delays may be for as short a time as possible, in order to prevent extraordinary charges to the States." The Remonstrants had very proper reasons for afterwards complaining:

1. That most of these honourable Commissioners, who had to represent the States General in that reverend assembly, were very deficient in the knowledge of Divinity, and were consequently totally unqualified to form a correct judgment of several of those matters which came under the cognizance of the Synod. But, by the opportune attentions of Bogerman, the ecclesiastical president, and his assessors, they were generally relieved from the burden of thinking and determining for themselves: After each session, Bogerman, or some of the leading inland ecclesiastics, usually had a private interview with them; when they concerted together about the proceedings to be adopted in the next session, and the President of the Commissioners was instructed in the answers which he must give, and had an appropriate speech prepared for the occasion. Nay, in some instances, we are told by one of their own party, this juggling was rather too apparent; for the Commissioners brought their decree written out at full length, before the matter to which it related had been discussed, and before the members of the Synod had expressed their determination. If the Foreign Divines occasionally raised scruples in the course of a debate, (and, though of the Calvinistic brotherhood, they were sometimes rather troublesome in this respect to the impetuous Bogerman,) the Commissioners were commonly appealed to for their decisive opinion; but, like prudent men who knew something about the snug management of such high matters, on these sudden emergencies they were accustomed to defer the delivery of their judgment till the next meeting;-and thus had an opportunity, in the mean time, of consulting their ecclesiastical advisers, for whose sake all these strange proceedings had been instituted. Indeed, the presence of these Commissioners and of the foreign Divines was indispensably necessary to the harsh measures which the Calvinists intended to adopt : For when any thing of an ungracious character was to be carried, in which the inland Divines did not wish to be seen, Bogerman's never-failing expe. dient, was to commit it to the Commissioners, or to the foreigners; the latter of whom frequently complained of the odium attached to this practice, while the former, as it became peaceable and patient men, carried the burden without repining.

2. Much skill in the Latin language was not requisite for men so strongly prejudiced against the Remonstrants as these Commissioners were; but, for the sake of their own characters, and to preserve at least the semblance of impartiality, they ought to have been competently qualified to understand the proceedings, which were conducted in Latin, and to express themselves with propriety. Instead of this, the members of the Synod and the spectators scarcely ever heard a word of what was said by some of them, (especially by the Commissioners of Holland, Utrecht and Over-Yssel, when it was their province to preside,) except by the mouth of their secretary Heinsius, who had on such occasions ample scope for the display of his classical acquirements and of his malignancy towards his old friends the Remonstrants. When the cited individuals answered any interrogatories, or when they presented a petition to the Commissioners, these incompetent Presidents could neither promptly return any answer themselves, nor suffer it to be done in their behalf, tiil the whole atfair had been fully explained to them in good maternal Low Dutch. Commissioners Brederode, Nieuburg, Artsbergen,

and (3) complete liberty for every one to declare his opinion. The rule to be observed in all these transactions is the WORD

Hagen and Hemert, were bad Latinists; and, it is said, they would not have ventured to conclude a bargain in that language, if it had been only of the value of a hundred Guilders. Hartefeld, burgomaster of Amersfort, one of the Utrecht deputies, seems to have been the most ignorant of all; for when his friends asked him how he acquitted himself in the Synod, in which every thing was transacted in a language that he did not understand, he replied in perfect good-humour, "Why, I acquire knowledge by degrees: By practice and attention I begin to understand matters a little better; for I keep a Latin Dictionary in my hand, and sometimes look into it for a word or two." -Muis van Holy, the burgomaster of Dort, who was as hot and intolerant a being as Bogerman himself, and loved to splutter out his impure Latin against the Remonstrants, addressed them on one occasion in these words, before his brother commissioners, Diristis VAS velle respondere [penultimâ brevi] ad SEXCENTOS et millia interrogatoria: He evinced the profundity of his literary attainments by his chaste pronunciation, and ready mode of construction.— Such, with a few creditable exceptions, were the men appointed by government to superintend the momentous proceedings of this Synod, with which they too seldom interfered, and to operate as a check upon the assembled ecclesiastics, whose creatures they willingly became.

3. But stronger grounds for complaints the Remonstrants had, when they subsequently alleged, that "the majority of these Commissioners were partial Calvinists." The States of Holland and Over-Yssel had long combated with the other States, by means of spirited Memorials, in favour of religious liberty and tolerant measures. Their noble stand against the incroachments of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny was described, for the instruction of all Europe, in the nervous language of Grotius, who published, in Latin, French and Low Dutch, his PIETAS ORDINUM HOLLANDIE, &c. three or four years prior to the convening of this Synod and his own imprisonment But when OverYssel was compelled, from unexpected local circumstances, to withdraw from this honourable confederacy, and when a change was effected in the magistracy of the different large towns within the Province of Holland by the machinations and personal exertions of Prince Maurice, the States of Holland were forced to succumb to the Generality, which was then composed of other individuals than those who had been members in the days of Arminius. No wonder therefore will be excited at these Commissioners to the Synod being generally rigid Calvinists. On this subject, Smoutius, a turbulent divine, employs an exulting expression, that does not come with a good grace from a Christian minister, because it betokens his familiar acquaintance with games of chance: "The Contra-Remonstrants found no difficulty in winning the game, when all their cards were honours." Two or three of the Commissioners, who shewed themselves more impartial than the rest, became the objects of suspicion to the ruling party, and were falsely represented, in letters transmitted to the States General and to Prince Maurice at the Hague, as persons that favoured the Remonstrants, which was then considered tantamount to an offence against government: By such insinuations as these against them, they were in danger of being stripped of all their offices and employments. The circumstances, to which we have now briefly alluded, shew, that the Remonstrants had nothing to hope from these gentlemen, each of whom was appointed to hold in weekly rotation the office of Lay President of the Synod.

At the second session of the Synod, it was suggested by Fosbergen, a member of the Synod, "Whether it would not be most proper, to choose the Ecclesiastical President out of the members of those provinces in which there had been no disputes about the Five Points?" And, "Whether among the Assessors and Secretaries there ought not to be some of the Remonstrant party?" The Lay President, who was a violent Contra-Remonstrant, instantly replied, “that

OF GOD, recorded in the books of the Old and New Testament. The power and influence which the most ancient Councils the elections were free, and that every man was at liberty to name whom he pleased;" which, constituted as he knew that assembly to be, imported, that they were at liberty to choose for their President what Calvinist they pleased. The inland members then proceeded to an election; and the majority of suffrages was declared to be in favour of John Bogerman, minister of Leuwarden, who was accordingly declared Ecclesiastical President. This is the man who, in 1600, when he was pastor of Sneek in Friesland, translated out of Latin into Low Dutch, Beza's sanguinary tract on Punishing Heretics; and considering Beza's sentiments not to be sufficiently warm and decided, he and his colleague Geldorp wrote a preface to it, in opposition to the Anabaptists. In that preface they maintained, "that God had made it a duty incumbent on the magistrates, to defend the true religion and to oppose the false with all their might. It was a poisonous notion, that the government ought not to trouble itself about religion, but to leave the pastors to propagate it by themselves, as well as they could, by ecclesiastical methods. Yet pernicious as such an opinion was, it was very agreeable to many persons, who found their interest in a political peace,' (as they termed it,) but which was an unchristian and unlawful one. By such a peace, (according to the doctrine of those persons,) ' every man was to be allowed the free exercise of his religion,' to the end, forsooth, that'no discord might arise between countrymen and fellowcitizens.' This is making peace with Satan."-They also declared, "that there ought to be only one religion allowed." As for the common objection, that "this would be lording it over men's consciences," they replied, "that this was the proper means to restore, according to the Divine command, the dominion of consciences to God, to whom alone it belonged; since they thus attempted only to execute the Divine commands by DIVINE METHODS."-In reply to the objection, that by the forcible restraint of what they called false doctrine and by the punishment of heretics, the Dutch would "suffer the loss of trade and manufactures, because those persons who were under accusation or suspicion would leave the country," they urged, "that this was the right way to obtain the Divine blessing on their trade. But though, in the execution of such a noble design, and in obedience to the commands of God, they might be in danger of losing all their trade; yet it would be preferable, to enjoy a small income with a good and tranquil conscience, than to possess with remorse of conscience provinces and towns prospering in commerce." The good sense of the unprejudiced reader will determine, whether the man, who had openly avowed such persecuting sentiments as these against his fellow Protestants, was a fit person to occupy the President's chair in an impartial Synod. The Remonstrants knew, that he had not abated in the least from his dogmatical rigour, and that in his view they and the Anabaptists appeared to be equally criminal and deserving of punishment. This might have been easily collected from his violent answer to the PIETAS ORDINUM of Grotius, mentioned page 384. Bogerman had also been an actor in the schism effected at the Hague, and had preached there, in opposition to the orders of government. His subsequent conduct in the chair completely verified the augury which the cited persons had formed of his character. Whether contemplated in his private capacity as a country pastor, or in his public station as the organ elect of the raving Calvinistic clergy at the Synod of Dort, he appears to have been in both respects an unamiable, plotting, and restless individual.

The following brief description of Bogerman was composed in nervous and elegant Latin by the great Episcopius: "Was not the President of the Synod a professed adversary, and a deadly enemy who entertained an almost mortal hatred against all those who had congregations of their own people in this country, and who at the same time held sentiments different from his, espe

ascribed to this sacred rule, were pointed out by the significant action of placing a COPY OF THE GOSPELS in the first and most

cially on those subjects which relate to the Remonstrants? Is it not a matter of public notoriety, and particularly well known to the lowest of the rabble in Friezland where he resides, that he is a most violent patron and keen defender of that pestilential and destructive maxim about killing Heretics, which was condemned a long time since by no mean number even of the Contra-Remonstrants themselves? Is not this the man, who, (as we have been informed by persons worthy of credit,) like a Roman Dictator by his individual authority managed all matters apart and in private among only a few of his confederate brethren, and factious associates, contrary to the tenour of his instructions, and without consulting those with whom he had been deputed to the Synod, and by whose common and deliberate counsel, (as was well befitting,) he had been commanded to transact all things? Nay, has be not been accused and convicted of this offence in the Provincial Synod which has been lately held in Friezland? Is not this the man, O thou righteous Avenger of insolence and pride, who has been openly upbraided for his artful tricks, fraudulent conduct, and palpable falsehoods,—the very crimes which in these offensive terms he charged upon the harmless and innocent Remonstrants, when, at his own pleasure and without having received any directions to that effect, he dismissed them from the Synod, and loaded and oppressed them most unreasonably with such bitter and corroding expressions, as he afterwards judged proper to decry, and for which, being moved by repentance, he thought it best to ask their forgiveness? Were not his ambition and avarice publicly cast in his face as a reproach, because, after he had been allowed (who would believe it?) to chuckle over the sum of thirteen Guilders a day, he added to the account his allowance for 29 days of vacation, thus augmenting the amount by 377 Guilders? Such was the holy and exemplary character of that man who was chosen leader of the reverend choir and president of this Synod!"

In a letter which Episcopius addressed to Taurinus in 1641, he incidentally mentions a curious circumstance about the spiritual consolation which Bogerman administered to a sick man. "I recollect to have read in an account of a conversation which Bogerman held with Prince Maurice during his illness, that the sick Prince asked him, 'How can those passages of scripture which 'promise grace and pardon to penitents, apply to me, since I do not discover 'within myself any of that serious repentance or contrition?'-Bogerman replied, 'Do you not feel within yourself a willingness or wish to repent?'When the Prince said, that he certainly had a feeling of that kind, Bogerman rejoined, 'This wish to be able to repent, is an infallible token of REGENERATION.'"-Such a soothing doctrine as this, was every way worthy of the President of the Synod of Dort, at which the Calvinistic axiom of "ONCE IN GRACE, ALWAYS IN GRACE" was completely established. The British Divines reasoned thus on the subject: "Our right or title to the kingdom of heaven and consequently to the vision of God, is not derived from any actions of our own, neither is it placed or built upon them; but it is placed in a free adoption, and in our union with Christ. Our right, therefore, to the kingdom is not taken away, unless that be removed upon which it is founded; If sons, then heirs, heirs of God, and co-heirs with Christ. As long then as the believer's adoption and his grafting into Christ remain, though he may wan der out of the way of the kingdom, yet he cannot fall from his hereditary right to that kingdom." (Acta Syn. Dor. 194, pt. 2.) While our pious countrymen were thus zealously contributing to spread this desecrating dogma, though they intended it for the comfort of the faithful, they could never have imagined the purpose to which it would be applied, a few years afterwards, by one of the greatest enemies of their church and order. Bishop Womack, in his "Result of False Principles," quoting from a pamphlet, entitled, "A Collection of Several Passages concerning his late Highness, OLIVER

honourable seat in the assembly. On this point the parties between whom the difference subsists, should be mutually

CROMWELL, in the Time of his Sickness," says, "This is that which sup.ported the death-bed faith of his late Highness, O. C., who speaking then of the Covenant, is reported to say, 'Whatsoever sins thou hast, dost, or shalt 'commit, if thou lay hold upon free-grace, you are safe. But if you put 'yourself under a covenant of works, you bring yourself under the law, and 'so under the curse; then you are gone.'

It has already been stated, (page 432) how equitable the conditions were which the Remonstrants proposed for the farther prosecution of their cause when they found that the Calvinists would not allow them to treat on Reprobation in the first instance. One of their propositions, was, "to defend their own doctrines, and to refute the opposite opinions of the Contra-Remonstrants and of those whom they consider orthodox." The allusion to it in this place, is only for the purpose of briefly elucidating the usual conduct of Bogerman. When he had read that part of their proposal, he paused, and exclaimed, "Pray, whom do you mean by those who are considered orthodox ?" Episcopius answered for himself and brethren, "The present time is not the most proper for asking such a question; but we shall have no objection against naming those teachers, when we come to that part of the discussion." This judicious reply did not satisfy the President; who, how foolish soever the questions might be which he proposed, if they were not instantly answered, was accustomed to vent his Calvinian spleen and vengeance against those who refused, and to exhibit them to the deputies, and principally to the foreigners, as perverse and obstinate fellows who would not acknowledge the authority of the Synod, of which he was the proper mouth and organ. On this occasion, therefore, he insisted upon having the names of those reputed orthodox teachers. Seeing the snare which he had again dextrously laid for them, and that he intended to imbitter the foreign Divines against them, as men who would not hesitate to expose the most renowned Doctors of their different countries, the Remonstrants presented a continued refusal to his most pressing intreaties, and resolved that his remarks should be grounded on his own evil surmises and not on their expressions. Finding, therefore, that they were not to be coaxed into his trap, Bogerman opened out his characteristic fury, and in a great passion exclaimed: "If you will not name them, I will. They are Zuinglius, Bucer, Calvin, Beza, Marlorat, Martyr, Zanchius, Piscator, Perkins, and Whitaker! those venerable men, those brave heroes, those noble lights of the church, those happy souls whose memory is blessed both by God and man! These are the persons whom you intend to expose!" This speech was pronounced with so much warmth, and in such a thundering tone, that his countenance changed, his joints trembled, and his words seemed to possess no coherence. When Episcopius describes this scene, he says, "What eyes, and what a countenance did the man exhibit! The perturbation which he manifested I can compare to nothing better than that of a man the tender pupil of whose eye had been pricked by some sharp instrument, the pain of which caused him to writhe with agony."

Bogerman, however, like other skilful actors, had always some purpose to answer, by these exhibitions of outrageous conduct: his madness was, in this respect, never devoid of method or reason. On this occasion, when he seemed to have recovered from his passion, he perceived some members of the Synod to be shocked at his fury; he therefore ordered the Remonstrants to retire, and, in excuse for himself, threw all the blame on them, assuring the Synod, that it was the remembrance of those good and holy men which had transported him so much beyond himself. He then played upon the feelings of the members, and intimated, that the Remonstrants, who had thus with impure hands attacked such great men, endeavoured to overthrow the authority both of the Commissioners and the Synod, to pervert the received doctrines of