After Holland had fallen a victim to her political partisanship, she gradually disappeared from public observation. Her greatness in the past would have been well nigh forgotten if Prescott and Motley had not recalled it. But the judgment of the world concerning her, in her present state, is not more flattering than that of the author of _Hudibras_, who, in addition to venting his spleen against the people, employs his wit upon the irrational land, calling it,
"A country that draws fifty feet of water, In which men live as in the hold of nature; And when the sea does in upon them break, And drowns a province, does but spring a leak."
But while the political status of Holland has been inferior and unobserved during the last century and a half, her important theological and religious career,--covering a much longer period than that,--is a theme of deep interest to every student of the history of the church.
Rationalism arose in Holland by means of some agencies similar to those which had produced it in Germany. The previous disputes and barren ministrations of the clergy made the soil ready for any theological error that might urge its claims with force. But the repulsive technicalities of Germany were not equally prevalent in Holland, and scholasticism refused to affiliate with the Reformed much longer than with the Lutheran church.
But when the synod of Dort, which held its sessions in 1618-1619, pronounced those dogmas by which the Arminians were excluded from the Dutch church, it established a standard of orthodoxy. In proportion as the synod gained the favor of the people, the Bible came into use, but more to serve the cause of polemics than of edification. Hugo Grotius, Erasmus, and other exegetical writers who had manifested independence in their interpretation of the Scriptures, were regarded with great suspicion and distrust. The door for the entrance of scholasticism was thrown wide open. To use the language of a writer of that day, "The doctrines were cut after the fashions of Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Scotus; while the power of the word of God was denied, and the language of Babel was heard in the streets of Jerusalem." Theologians made an idle display of learning. Imaginary distinctions, definitions, and divisions became the food of the youth in schools of every grade, and of the congregations in all the churches. The books which have come down to us from that period are weapons against Atheism, Deism, Socinianism, and every other heresy that had arisen during the history of Christianity. Whether light was created on the first day; whether it was an attribute or a substance; whether Adam, after the formation of Eve, was a rib the worse; whether the knowledge of the unconverted may be called spiritual knowledge;--these were some of the topics of labored sermons. It was announced as a most gratifying result of accurate research that the soul of a boy was created forty days after conception, while that of a girl required eighty.