Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/51

 40 THE REVOLUTION

Church was reorganised in 1816, a new formula was framed, which runs as follows :—“We accept in good faith and heartily believe the doctrine, which, in agreement with the Word of God, is contained in the Formularies of Unity of the Dutch Reformed Church.” The change in phraseology may seem slight, but in course of time it led to a ferment in the Church, which lasted for many years. When Groen’s party, in opposition to the Groningen School, set itself to the task of enforcing what it regarded as sound doctrine, a question arose as to the interpretation of the formula, and the Church was divided into two parties, known as that of the Quiet and that of the Quatenus. Did the words in the formula—“the doctrine in agree- ment with the Word of God "—mean “the doctrine because it agreed with the Word of God,” or “the doctrine in so far as it agreed with the Word of God "P The former party held that they were in the right, otherwise, as Groen put it, the formula would be an explana- tion that explained nothing, and a promise that promised nothing. The latter held that they must be right, otherwise the new formula