Ondersoek en antwoord [...] op 't request door de gedeputeerden der Noordhollandsche synode tot Edam

EXAMINATION and ANSWER

To the PETITION of the Deputies of the North Holland Synod, held at Edam, 1691, against the Book by B. BEKKER, named The World Bewitched.

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The Deputies of the Synod of Edam, having been ordered, according to the Resolution, to use all suitable offices to suppress the aforementioned Book, and to confer beforehand with his honorable the Lord Commissioner: have (as it appears) considered it a very suitable office to request the State by petition that the same might be forbidden; whether they had already conferred with the Lord Commissioner about it, according to their charge, or not. That circumstance does not concern me here, but the Petition concerns me. It is no suitable office, (as everyone knows well) to suppress a book by wanting to have it forbidden: but it is easy nonetheless for those who do not want to take the trouble of refuting it; and at the same time very ready for those who are accustomed to looking at the Scripture and the Church and the State in a popish Catholic manner. The Scripture: to explain it in no other way than according to the tradition of the Teachers; or if anyone attempts that, to accuse him of twisting the Scripture and transgressing the institutions of the elders. The Church: to establish it through external authority; and to recognize no other as the Church than those who have oversight of it: in such a way that he who does not follow the Teachers in everything is regarded by them as one who differs from the Church or sets himself against it. The State: to hold even the highest Sovereignty to this; that they merely grant the judgment to this so-called Church as to what Books are to be suffered under their territory; and to forbid those which the Church does not want to tolerate based on her mere loathing. So then these Fathers of the Fatherland the political rulers would only follow the whims of the Mother, that is this Church; and immediately cast out from the house the food that she once finds distasteful: without asking or considering whether they themselves might still have a taste for it, or indeed whether it might serve as necessary nourishment. It is certain that the Sovereignty has as much right of judgment for itself in one dispute of Doctrine as it has in another; as long as both are equally scriptural. But suppose one intended to teach from the Scripture (as has long been driven in Utrecht, and today is most strongly driven in Rotterdam) that the right to call Ministers, and also to dismiss them, in no way belongs to the Magistrate: if I now asserted the contrary, shall the Magistrate be petitioned, and shall they, being petitioned, be forced to forbid such a book? That is, shall the Sovereignty,