§1
In the book On the Union and Synod of the Evangelicals, chapter 8 and those following, I demonstrated by most certain arguments that a synod cannot be instituted between Calvinists and Lutherans. I possess as consenting witnesses not only all the Lutherans but also a good part of the Calvinists, and even Pareus himself παλινῳδοῦντα, recanting and refuting himself. He confessed that hope of a synod was far away and referred peace and the synod to the deceits of the Cretans and Aeginetans. In the Postcolloquy I also taught that a synod would possess no utility, whether it were instituted among Calvinists alone or Lutherans alone, because the authority of that synod is merely human. Those whom its decrees displease will always be able to deny that they are true; they will be permitted to cry out: “The oracles of God must not be subjected to the censure of men.” Those who have now learned from Calvin to contemn and condemn so many hundreds of ancient synods will place their own interpretation and private inspiration before all Calvinist councils.
§2
Why, therefore, do I produce the opinions of the Calvinists now in favor of a synod and now against a synod? Why do they themselves speak now in favor of a synod and now against one? You ought to have sought the reason for their disagreement with themselves, and then to have asked me why I objected to them this domestic conflict.
Now I shall state both reasons. They reject a synod, for they do not wish to be pressed by the authority of the ancient synods. They understand that they must abandon their opinions, despair of the profits of contentious sermons, and undergo shipwreck of reputation unless they attack the ancient councils. If they defended the ancient synods, they would neither overturn the Scriptures by their own intellect nor adulterate them by perfidy. For they would receive the reading and understanding of Scripture from the most weighty judgment—from the senate of the Church assembled in the Holy Spirit; they would not cancel and explain it according to their own most frivolous opinions. They see that Scripture is fertile according to the faculty of each nature and has been so disposed by God’s will as to supply material even to heretics. They prefer to employ that fertility to their own destruction rather than be led to salvation by another’s teaching. That is not the fault of Scripture; for although those same Scriptures seem to have supplied materials to heresies, when rightly understood they nevertheless refute those same heresies born from their corruption.
Therefore, since in a dispute concerning the Scriptures they rest upon their own intellect and judgment alone, and borrow an interpretation agreeable to their morals either from ancient and most condemned heresies or deform it by a new contrivance from their own inspiration, they must necessarily dissent from all the ancient churches and therefore hate the authority by which they are refuted.
§3
Let the Calvinists, rigid and mild, who recently fought in the arena in Holland, well matched, be an example to us. And when you hear that the mild have been matched with the rigid, do not fear that they will presently succumb voluntarily without combat. That softness is tough and tenacious; it does not easily lie open to a wound; it receives the violence of rigidity dexterously and permits what is inclined to ruin to be broken by its own assault.
This horrendous proposition belongs to the rigid—in the formulated state of the controversy which they offered to the Estates: “That he who once truly believes, even if with deliberate mind he lapses into great and atrocious sins, is nevertheless so preserved by Jesus Christ, and will be preserved hereafter, by the force of the eternal decree of election and from that ἀνεμποδίστου [unhindered] and irresistible power of God, that he can never lose it totally and finally; and consequently is then outside every danger and fear of condemnation; and that this is indeed the sole foundation of the consolation of the children of God.”
These things, so filthy and impious that even the Gnostics and Carpocrates ought to be ashamed of them, would not be said unless the Scriptures were wrongly understood, unless not only the creeds and the doctrine handed down through the Apostles, Christ’s companions, were utterly overturned, but the decrees of all councils were rejected. Therefore all ancient things must altogether be overthrown if these new things are to be established.
Thus they must flee and reject the ancient synods in order to maintain novel heresies; but in turn, when pressed from another side, they are compelled to betake themselves to the aids they spurned. Thus Calvin in Institutes, book 4, chapter 9, §1, professes that he venerates the ancient councils “from his heart”—and would that he said that “from his heart” from his heart. For they embrace the first four General Councils—the Nicene, First Constantinopolitan, Ephesian, and Chalcedonian—not from their heart but from necessity, on account of Servetus and the Antitrinitarians. They were compelled to receive the fifth and sixth synods on account of the Lutherans, the Ubiquitarians, strenuous enemies who produce a confusion of the natures in Christ.
But perhaps they will hear their own councils. They will not. An example from the same Belgium: they objected to the Remonstrants the judgment of the professors of Leiden against the Remonstrants. The authority of the Academy of Leiden is weighty in Batavia. But what did the Remonstrants say? “Why should Gomarus’s judgment against us possess more force than Arminius’s for us? Or what does it accomplish to produce such a judgment in this place, which can neither demonstrate truth firmly nor introduce unity of consensus with the Reformed churches?” Will they not oppose this wall against all the conventicles of their own men by which those things are not approved? “What does it accomplish to produce their judgments? For they are human and can neither display truth firmly nor produce unity of consensus.” And next: “Are the brethren perhaps intent upon showing that certain articles have been defined otherwise in the Academy of Leiden than we now profess? But what does this have to do with the matter?” And a little afterward: “It would not be right for either a man or any assembly to prejudge for us in this cause.”
Thus, if you regard the matter, they will hear no councils at all. To all they will answer: “What does it accomplish to produce these things? But what does this have to do with the matter, if it has been defined otherwise in the councils of our men? No man, no assembly, ought to prejudge for us. It suffices for us to have discharged our consciences for the defense of truth and liberty in the Church.” Thus they think inconstantly and alternate their opinions. They flee the ancient councils because, if they acknowledge them, they perceive themselves condemned. They employ those same councils against new heresies. They desire new councils from their own men so that they may afflict brethren who think otherwise; they refuse new councils of their own men by which their own causes might be prejudged. In one word: when councils oppose them, they are defective; if they favor them, they are approved. They long ago made a Lesbian rule from Scripture, twisting it to their own opinions. They greatly desire to drag councils with the same impulse. Hence, therefore, the foulest tossing about of opinions; hence those many things which men who refuse to understand rightly must interpret badly.
§4
But in adducing their opinions to prove truth against them, I possess the Apostle as my author.
He instructed the idolatrous Athenians toward faith from their own poets, Acts 17, and proved from them a truth which those authors of things rightly said either did not know or held down in unrighteousness. The ancient Fathers imitated the Apostle: Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, Minucius Felix, Blessed Cyprian, Arnobius, Lactantius, Origen, Eusebius, and Augustine; especially Tertullian, who judges that heresies should be attacked by the same method. “In this place,” he says, “it will be lawful for me to seek arguments even from the party of other heretics. That kind of proof is firm which is taken even from an adversary, so that truth may be proved by the very enemies of truth.”
But these things too must be confirmed by a Belgian example. The Contra-Remonstrants, or the Rigid, seriously sought a synod from the Estates. The Remonstrants, or Mild, seem to have possessed the same desire, as they state in the writing concerning the method of conciliating peace exhibited to the Estates. But when they came to the matter, they declared that they wished for no synod and conceded all power to the Estates. Concerning this, Caspar Barlaeus writes thus in Bogermannus ἐλεγχομένῳ [Refuted]:
“Therefore Bogermannus cuts off every hope of toleration unless provision is made by a lawful judgment—that is, unless this entire controversy which has hitherto been agitated and is still agitated has been decided by a synod. But what kind of synod? I shall explain: one which the Estates of Holland permit to be convoked and celebrated; for which they make provision concerning place and time, as well as costs and the expense of meals; to which they delegate one or another spectator from their own number, who may be aware of the matters conducted there—lest they think the betrayal of the fatherland to the Spaniard is being discussed; finally, whose decrees they hold most ratified by their own seal and put into effect against the refractory as swiftly as they can and ἐμπρακτέως [in deed]. The remaining matters must belong to the synod and the theologians.
“Men delegated to it by the classes or ecclesiastical magistracy will assemble: men especially fit for disputing and for refuting μετὰ ἀντιλέγοντας [those who speak against them], possessing testimony that they are sound in doctrine, free from every stain of suspicion, and taught by experience in ecclesiastical affairs pertaining to these things, ἐσθλά τε καὶ τὰ σχέτλια [both good things and wretched things]. The Fathers will sit. Some president will lead the words; and in a long oration he will relate the labors and griefs of the Church struggling with so many monsters of errors, and will give thanks to God that the sun has now shone by which it is lawful to deliberate, in the customary manner, concerning a salutary remedy for these evils and to condemn the heretical opinions of the adversaries by common votes together and at once. He will likewise exhort the brethren to counsels of moderation, to serious examination of the articles, and to judge holily and without προσωποληψίας, partiality, and to the other things which contribute to formalities.
“The Remonstrants will be summoned according to custom; they will be accused of ἑτεροδοξίας [heterodoxy], because by private authority, without consulting a synod, they dared to depart from the received formulas of the catechism and Belgian confession and to contradict the summary of sound words. If they possess anything by which they can defend themselves, they will be ordered to propose it briefly and syllogistically, so that, if what they say is true, it may be approved by the judgment of the synod; if false, they may subject themselves to the spirits of the prophets and comply with their decree unless they wish to be held as heathens and publicans.
“It will be disputed sharply whether the articles contravene the Scriptures and truth as it is in the churches and as it is taught in the churches. These men will deny it; those will affirm it. Finally, after the Remonstrants have been ordered to leave and walk about outside, it will be deliberated what must be done. Since the opinions and judgments of the Fathers will differ, counters will be sent around; and, after the votes have been collected, a decree will be made approximately in this form:
“‘The Synod has decreed and judged, and even now decrees and judges, that those five articles of the Remonstrants, both by reason of themselves and by reason of their consequences, are not orthodox but contradict the received doctrine of these churches, and therefore are by no means to be tolerated in doctors and pastors. But for all those among the Remonstrants who are willing to preserve a profound silence concerning them and promise solemnly that they will contradict the orthodox opinion in nothing, let there be mercy on account of their wives and children. But those who wish to defend the aforesaid articles tooth and nail and profess them by voice and writings shall be removed from the ministry, and let another receive their inheritance. But those who have attacked the Church in books hitherto published into the light and have blasphemed its doctrine, unless they are willing παλινῳδεῖν [to recant] and humbly beg pardon before the same synod for the fault of their deed, shall be struck by the thunderbolt of excommunication.’
“With this decree they will go to the Estates and request its ratification—not because doing so is necessary, but because it is conducive. If the Estates approve that moderate decree of the synod, they will hear themselves called fathers of the fatherland, nursing fathers of the Church, Constantines, Theodosiuses, and most Christian princes, because they have satisfied Bogermannus’s wishes, Sibrandus’s expectation, and the desires of so many pious men by which they are now tormented. But if they refuse and say that judgment of all those matters is owed to them, and rescind the decree of the synod itself after convicting it of multiple nullity, the Fathers will return to their old theme: peace is despaired of, there is no hope of toleration; nor will the Estates be held as they wish to be held—lovers of religion and haters of heresies—but, on the contrary, their favorers and promoters.”
This is the very αὐτοσύνοδον [synod-itself], the most exact Idea of that synod by whose lawful judgment Bogermannus wishes these controversies to be completed. Plato would call it αὐτοσύνοδον; barbarous philosophers, “Synodeity.” But those who constrain the Estates by this law of a synod and ecclesiastical judgment have not resolved to make an end of raising tumults before they have carried off a triumph concerning the Remonstrants’ articles. Let them take care lest, while they seek to strike a fragile thing with a tooth, they break it against a solid one and, by inflating excessively, produce a rupture. It sometimes happens that he who, by refusing lawful conditions of peace, wishes the enemy utterly routed loses his cause, although by conceding something to the other he could himself have been preserved. But these things are θεῶν ἐν γούνασι κεῖται: placed in the knees of the gods.