Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/53

 42 THE REVOLUTION

may be questioned, but it is at least a prominent characteristic dogma, and even Groen’s party at that time did not wish it to be put in the forefront. The Synod decided to defer the matter “until better times when they should have more light”; till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim. This waiting attitude did not satisfy the Church. Some- thing had to be done to allay the storm, and accordingly a formula was drawn up and adopted in 1841. In this formula the candi— date is required to give his adherence to the doctrine, which constitutes in its nature and spirit the essence and substance of the formu— laries. Scholten interpreted this as meaning the fundamental principles of Reformed theology, and accepting it as a challenge on the part of the Church to her theologians to expound them, for a Church cannot be supposed to seek to hide her doctrinal light under a bushel, he wrote his work on the doctrine of the Reformed Church. Some account of the nature and spirit of this work will form the substance of the third lecture of this series, along with a notice of the theological views of his equally able con-