A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations/Cocceians

COCCEIANS, a denomination of the seventeenth century; so called from John Cocceius, a professor of divinity in the university of Leyden. He represented the whole history of the Old Testament as a mirror, which held forth an accurate view of the transactions and events that were to happen in the church under the dispensation of the New Testament, and unto the end of the world. He maintained that by far the greatest part of the ancient prophecies foretold Christ's ministry and mediation, and the rise, progress and revolutions of the church; not only under the figure of persons and transactions, but in a literal and direct manner; and that Christ was the substance of the Old Testament as well as of the New.

Cocceius also taught, that the covenant made between God and the Jews was of the same nature as the new covenant by Jesus Christ; that the new law was promulgated by Moses, not merely as a rule of obedience, but also as a representation of the covenant of grace; that when the Jews had provoked the Deity by their various transgressions, (particularly by the worship of the golden calf,) the severe yoke of the ceremonial law was added as a punishment: that this yoke, which was painful in itself, became doubly so on account of its typical signification; since it admonished the Israelites from day to day of the imperfection of their state, filled them with anxiety, and was a perpetual proof that they had merited the righteous judgment of God, and could not expect, before the coming of the Messiah, the entire remission of their iniquities; that indeed good men, under the Mosaic dispensation, were after death made partakers of glory; but that, nevertheless, during the whole course of their lives they were far removed from that assurance of salvation, which rejoices the believer under the dispensation of the gospel; and that their anxiety flowed from this consideration, that their sins, though they remain unpunished, were yet pardoned, because Christ had not as yet offered himself up to make an atonement for them. See Hutchinsonians.