Nodige bedenkingen op de niewe beweegingen, onlangs verwekt door den circulairen brief en andere middelen, tegen den auteur van 't boek de betoverde weereld

as he now found. This proves that I have in no way intended to burden the Church; but to the best of my ability to enlighten it regarding the difficulties people made about that Book, with which I also intended to help build it up on that most holy faith which I had proclaimed in all purity and sincerity for so long a time. I proved that further when I placed it into the hands of the Church Council original: "Kerkenraad" itself; with a plea for everyone, Elder original: "Ouderling" as well as Minister original: "Predikant", to read it through from front to back and to examine it; as they undertook to do: offering at the same time to hold back this second printing (of which the first part was already finished and almost half of the other) until their opinion on it had been heard. I do not investigate how the Brothers acquitted themselves of that resolution: as for myself; I have kept my word as an honest man as long as I was bound to it, and was not forced to change. To the marked disadvantage of my honor, I withheld such a Book from the readers; which one had only to read to free it, if not entirely, then certainly for a large part, from such a bad name as rumor had given to it. But what happens to me? I go from there peacefully to Friesland a northern province of the Netherlands to still rising movements there: and God grants that I fully achieve my aim there. Coming home, I find that the Church Council has loathed my Book. That judgment, having thus gone before, caused the bad suspicion which people had of a book of which there was so much talk to grow into a bad opinion: and meanwhile the press stood still, and few had the Book. Had they read it, they would have spoken better of it than they did: of that I was well assured. For people said slanderously that I denied Devil and Hell, yes, God himself and his Word, or at the mildest, called them into doubt. This I suffered all the while without the least contradiction; considering nonetheless that the best means was if the Book itself could once speak. I still did not allow that, until the Classis regional church assembly also decided, and the Church Council agreed to the same, to first examine my work before I should be allowed to publish it, and yet wanted to keep the same under their