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

...authority referring to the State mentioned on the previous page to judge according to the wishes of the clergy, to pronounce their own sentence, to give up their own guardianship, and to let the opposing party be the judge? As absurd as this is, it is equally necessary that the State sees with its own eyes; and that our scholars of Scripture suppress the books that stand in their way (if they can) by using the Scripture itself. For that is their office. By doing so, people knew how to destroy harmful books even before there were Christian authorities. This was also true after the Reformatie Reformation, when the Pausdom Papacy or Catholic system still sat on the throne and we thanked God that we were allowed to read our own books, and above all, the Bible itself. But now people want the highest authority to be so blind that as soon as a book is loathed by the clergy—even before they truly know it, or indeed, before they have even seen it—the State should immediately forbid it. I do not say this because it now affects me: but it has always been against my mind, as often as people spoke of forbidding a book or books when I had a say in the matter.

More than twenty four years ago, when people wanted to ban the Philosophie van Descartes Philosophy of René Descartes from the Church and Academy of Friesland, I myself wrote a book in Latin to prevent that. At the same time, I argued that people should not deal in the same way with the book by Mr. Wolzogen concerning the Interpreter of the Scriptures; nor with that of Mr. Veldhusen regarding the use of Reason in matters of Faith. Afterward, I also wrote about Idolatry and Superstition, which, like my current work, was sent around to all the Classen regional church governing bodies and Synoden synods or general assemblies of that time and most strictly examined. I still have the extracts made from it by the committee members of the Classis of Franeker, through which I prevented the progress of that work.

In the year 1676, I heard Brandt's History of the Reformation heavily accused in this Classis, claiming it was a book to the significant disadvantage of the Reformed Church. They said it was no small insolence of the man to bring it before our eyes, dedicating it to the teachers of the public church, as if he were taunting us and writing to spite us all. It was therefore proposed whether the Classis should appoint committee members, or whether the Synodus should be requested, to show the harmfulness of Brandt's Histories and thus arrange for it to be forbidden by the State. My advice was that Brandt had not written in the name of the Remonstranten Remonstrants, a Dutch Protestant group often at odds with the state church, nor by their order, but out of his own motivation and for himself. Uitenbogaard had done the same, and Triglandius had written against him in turn. At that time, neither Classen nor Synoden had risked their dignity against one man. It would be a pity if there were no Triglandius now who could write against this new author, such that entire Classen and Synoden would have to move themselves because of it. The matter did not proceed with us then, but nonetheless, it still came before the Synode, by whose order the Deputies requested the State that Brandt be prevented from further writing. And that was precisely when he had reached the years of the National Synod. This is why the Remonstranten now imagine that we do not trust these

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