11.

Their goal regarding me is clear and plain enough to read there. What else lies hidden behind it they leave aside, although they make it sufficiently apparent without saying it in plain words. Concerning me, it is said loudly and in large letters that my INBLYVEN remaining or continuance in the Ministry and in the Church is in their way. Namely, with the sentiment that I confess in that the Act of Satisfaction, I may not remain in the Church or in the Ministry. Therefore, I must either recant or be cast out.

But who has given this or that Consistory in particular the right to judge which Predikant Minister or Preacher should be tolerated in another church? Although he does not preach among us, they say, his book nevertheless preaches everywhere. Therefore, he must go. But will the book then not preach when he himself is silent? Or he must recant. Is the book then no longer the book when the author has recanted it? Not his recantation, but the refutation of it ought to destroy the book. Has any one of all these cirkelſchryvers writers of the circular letters ever attempted that? Yes: if scolding, lying, slandering, willful distortion of meaning and words, and purely wild rambling is refuting, then Koelman, Brink, and Leydekker, and their like, have refuted it, one more forcefully than the other. That all their writing is of this nature, and that it is nothing else, I shall yet prove to them in due time.

Those evil little books were already in the world before the Classis, to whom it pertained, gave the verdict. Had they seen such great strength in their proof, they would have shown it. Or they must mean to say that I was spared because I was among my closest colleagues, who did not wish to be the same to me. But that cannot be: since those who show the harshest zeal testified most strongly that they were my friends. These, then, did not want to do anything out of affection. But let us also see whether among the book and letter writers there are not those who were just as close to me as any of my own colleagues. I have nothing to say of Van Brakel, who has counted me among his friends since our school days, and believed he should do so, despite the fact that we were always different in particular opinions and in the style of kerkbeſtier church governance.