Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/45

 34 THE REVOLUTION

Scholten and Chantepie de la Saussaye—the subject of our third lecture~to the action of Groen’s party on the question of the relation between Church and Doctrine. The Doctrine of the Dutch Reformed Church is contained in three documents, which are termed the Formularies of Unity. These are a Confession of Fad/z drawn up by Guido de Brés in 1561, which is modelled on the French Confession which was accepted by the Synod of Paris in 1559; a translation of the Hez'de/oerg Cate- c/zz'sm, drawn up in 1563, and the Docz‘rz'na/ Canons of Don‘, framed in 1619 by the Synod of Dort with a view to settle the Remonstrant or Arminian Controversy. The doctrine is, of course, essentially the same as that contained in all the Confessions of the Reformed Church, the Wesimz'nsz‘er among the rest, with certain points of difference which throw a certain light on the development of Reformed theology. Dutch writers are fond of describing their formularies as beautiful, and the epithet some— times at least is not inappropriate. The chapter on Providence, for example, is an exceedingly beautiful one. “ We believe that