§1
I willingly employ this kind of argument, both because it possesses some force for confirming Catholics and because it possesses very great force for convicting adversaries. Certainly that cause is good which an adversary is compelled to advance to his own detriment; victory is ready when it is voluntarily offered from the enemy’s camp. Their own supreme commander concedes what we have already proved, although with one hand he recalls what he gave with the first.
“We certainly concede freely,” he says in Institutes, book 4, chapter 9, §13, “that if a dispute concerning some dogma arises, there is no better or more certain remedy than for a synod of true bishops to assemble, where the disputed dogma may be examined. For a definition of this kind, upon which the pastors of the churches have agreed communally after invoking the Spirit of Christ, will possess far more weight than if each separately handed down to the people at home what he had conceived, or a few men privately composed it. Next, when the bishops have been collected into one place, they deliberate in common more advantageously what and in what form they must teach, lest diversity produce a stumbling block. Third, Paul prescribes this method in judging doctrines. For when he attributes judgment to individual churches, he shows what the order of proceeding should be in graver causes: namely, that the churches should undertake a common examination among themselves.
“And thus the very sense of piety instructs us that if anyone disturbs the Church with an unusual dogma, and the matter reaches the point that there is danger of a graver dissension, the churches should first assemble, examine the proposed question, and finally, after a just discussion has been held, bring forward a definition taken from Scripture, which may both remove doubt among the people and stop the mouth of wicked and covetous men, lest they dare to proceed further. Thus, when Arius arose, the Nicene Synod was assembled, which by its authority both broke the criminal efforts of the impious man, restored peace to the churches which he had vexed, and asserted the eternal divinity of Christ against his sacrilegious mouth. Then, when Eunomius and Macedonius stirred up new tumults, their insanity was met with a similar remedy through the Constantinopolitan Synod. Nestorius’s impiety was routed by the Council of Ephesus. Finally, from the beginning this was the ordinary method in the Church for preserving unity whenever Satan began to contrive anything.” Thus far Calvin.
He then adds: “But let us remember that not all ages or places possess Athanasiuses, Basils, Cyrils, and similar defenders of true doctrine, whom the Lord then raised up. Indeed, let us consider what happened at the second Synod of Ephesus, where the Eutychian heresy prevailed: Flavian, a man of holy memory, was cast into exile with certain pious men,” etc. Yet the Church was not there: I confess it. But I deny that this is perpetual—that an interpretation of Scripture which has been received by the votes of a council is true
and certain.
§2
Completely beyond reason, he both establishes a council and concedes that it is a remedy for error: let them bring forward a definition from Scripture, remove doubt among the people, and stop the mouth of the wicked, but nevertheless let them possess no certain interpretation of Scripture. And let it be lawful for Arius and all the rest to resist most freely, since there is no certainty in those asserting and all can err no less than individuals. But let us accept what he grants: there is no more certain or better remedy than a council. Let us defer to another place how greatly he errs when he renders uncertain that remedy which he acknowledges to be unsurpassed in goodness and certainty.
§3
Next, Pareus, the man with whom I am dealing, is a substantial witness for me. He praises the purpose of the Lutheran princes whom he hates when they seek a General Council, and he wrote a pacific book On the Synod and Union of the Evangelicals. For he thinks the controversies between the Lutherans and Calvinists, which are many and great, can be removed by a synod; and he loves a synod so ruinously that, while it is being convened, he embraces Syncretism, the mask of a synod, with both arms. Therefore we possess the matter accomplished. But because the Hollanders are accustomed to mingle in the business of all kingdoms, I would do them injury unless I also summoned them here. Thus the counsel of the Remonstrants which they were ordered to explain is comprehended in these words:
“According to this apostolic counsel of mutual toleration, noble and powerful lords, we show in the state of the controversy which we exhibit here under the individual disputed heads by what method—in our judgment, at least—peace could be cultivated in the Church of God through mutual concord. For this purpose we humbly ask you to direct your minds promptly, since we cannot devise a more advantageous remedy than that some tolerate others, at least at this time and until the spirits now disturbed beyond measure and perhaps too alienated from one another, gradually calmed and mutually joined to one another, may weigh and examine the whole business more exactly through a verbal colloquy in a free synodal ecclesiastical assembly, empty of prejudgments, to be celebrated at the proper time by the authority, protection, judgment, and governance of your noble powers; and until we may all be led to one opinion, or, if necessary, it may be judged which opinion is nearer to the truth of Holy Scripture and to the edification which is according to piety, so that an order may afterward be instituted,” etc.
But the Contra-Remonstrants urge a council far more strongly.
These are their words: “After long and mature deliberations, with all possible and customary methods weighed, we could not discern in the fear of the Lord that any more advantageous way could be chosen or undertaken by which these difficulties might be thoroughly composed with dexterity than that, at the first possible time, by the authority of all the most illustrious and powerful Lords States General, a National Synod be convoked and celebrated in which the controversies may be fully disclosed, examined, and judged from the word of God; and in which thereafter an order of mutual toleration and association may be sanctioned by common opinion, so that through it at last some general method of peace and concord may be established, and timely opposition may be made to dissensions, exacerbations, stumbling blocks, schisms, and similar difficulties that may thereafter arise.
“This is the method always employed from the very times of the Apostles, and exhibited and indicated to us by the Holy Spirit Himself as the most advantageous and especially accommodated to this purpose, as appears from Acts of the Apostles 15. Even after the times of the Apostles the Christian churches were preserved in this manner during many and most grave persecutions. All pious magistrates and Christian churches afterward followed their examples in similar difficulties, with great edification and benefit to the churches, and found this method most useful, as can be proved from the thread and sequence of ecclesiastical history.
“On the contrary, whenever other ways were brought forward—whether of ambiguous and two-edged toleration, of silence proclaimed on each side, or of lulling controversies which had arisen in doctrine—it was always learned by experience that difficulties could not be removed in this manner, but after incrustation of this kind quarrels always afterward erupted again with greater disquiet and harm to the churches. If the churches of these regions had been left free and permitted to hold a national assembly of this kind at the proper times, difficulties of this kind could not so easily have arisen in the churches, nor have spread thus far or taken increase, but could without any labor have been either guarded against and forestalled in this manner or, if they had arisen, immediately lulled and removed from the midst. Instances of ἀταξίας [disorder], dissolution, and difficulty would not be found everywhere in the churches and their government, as though daily. The Reformed religion would not have made so little progress in these regions nor suffer so much harm daily, as all the pious are compelled to see with the highest grief and sorrow of spirit.
“Therefore the Reformed churches in these regions suffer so great a loss from no other thing as from the delay of the National Synod, which has now been deferred beyond even the twentieth year, with the greatest loss—incapable of being expressed by any words—to the Reformed religion and the churches in these regions, and with no slight weakening of the condition of this state. It greatly concerns its preservation that in the doctrine of the Reformed religion and the government of the churches in these regions some certain and general tenor be established and preserved, which certainly cannot occur without the aid of National Synods of this kind.
“It is added that such is now the constitution of the churches in these regions that difficulties have arisen not only from those five articles exhibited by the Remonstrants, but that various, diverse, and new dogmas concerning the principal heads of our Christian religion are moreover defended and proposed by various pastors of the churches, both openly from the pulpit and in books published into the light. Such are the dogmas concerning the full satisfaction of Jesus Christ for our sins; concerning the justification of man before God; concerning saving faith; concerning original sin; concerning certainty of salvation; concerning the perfection of man in this life; and finally concerning many other matters which we judge to fight diametrically against the word of God and the catholic doctrine of all the Reformed churches, as this may be seen, among other things, from the declaration published in print by Adolphus Venator, residing at Alkmaar. Thus those five articles do not contain either all or the principal heads concerning which dispute is conducted today among the ministers of the churches in these regions. Therefore it is especially necessary that controversies of this kind be removed in good time by the aid of a National Synod, and that similar others be forestalled, lest on their account the common churches of these regions be torn apart and rent by schism.”