Twee brieven [...] aan Everhardus vander Hooght

attention; much less, ever placed an answer upon it. Believe me Brother, I now see seven Letters, with that which clings to them, from Haggebher Philalethes a pseudonym meaning "The Man who loves Truth", but the six I have not read, and shall not do so either. You know, and all the world knows, what I wrote to you in the first: to that I still hold. Only I must show you and all the world, what a poor writer you are, in that which you call History of the Ecclesiastical Procedures, about which you admit on the other side of the Title page to have conferred with others; so that everyone may see with you, what is to be thought of your Letters themselves, which you say to have made alone, and to which that History is patched in pieces at the back. That of the first six I let pass however; I have enough with the last (which is the seventh); and it is also most in my way, for reasons which are now laid down. Or have you not yet understood it well: it shall be, because you thereby disturb the good Congregation of Amsterdam, and everywhere where people wish to read or believe your Letters; whom I seek to keep in rest, or to restore. Hear then what I have to say to you: and he who lives, let him mark what I say to van der Hooght Minister of Nieuwendam.

I have not seen (perhaps you yourself not yet either) the Letter with which the Deputies of the Synod the regional assembly of the church were requested to appear once more for the last time at the meeting of the Classis the local governing body of ministers and elders; nor also their answer, which contains the refusal to come there. But I do not know how this hangs together, where you write, that they have regarded that meeting of the 20th of November as a Classis continuata a continued session of the regional church governing body of the 7th of the same month, and that the one of the 22nd of January was not such a one in which one however (as you rightly say) began the matter where it was last left. For that is called continuation.

But it is of greater weight (though it does not seem so at first) that which you say with even fewer words, that the Articles the points of theological dispute or confession submitted on the 22nd of January by the deputies of the Classis, were drafted by me. For that is not so; and I must say how the situation is there: since various evil writings have come out against me, where I am miserably criticized over many words of that Act; as if I had tricks in it, to be able to