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

to make an impression, the matter is clothed in the telling with circumstances that did not occur exactly as the letter of the text implies.

This refers to the history of Job. What irreverence I have committed there is obscure for me to guess. For it cannot be because I affirm the truth of the history, since both in the past and today, Hebrew and Christian theologians not of the lowest rank original Latin: "haud infimæ notæ", as Lord Spanheim Friedrich Spanheim the Younger, a Dutch theologian says, have held it to be a depiction of a fictional matter original Latin/Greek: "rei fictæ ὑποτύπωσιν". Our translators themselves (as has been shown) have noted it as figurative regarding Revelation 12:8. But although they first affirm the truth of the history, as I also do, they do not refrain from acknowledging where the narrative begins that this is said by way of a parable, just as I also noted in Section 20 of that chapter. Now it is certainly the style and property of every kind of parable to clothe the matter with circumstances that did not happen as the letter implies. For even the same Lord Spanheim admits this in his History of Job original Latin: "Hist. Jobi", chapter 1, section 3. It is the custom of the Scriptures sometimes to devise events historically which are only parables, either to represent virtue in a most perfect image or to vividly depict the foulness of vices. original Latin: "Mos Scripturarum, fingendi quandoque historicè gesta, quæ non nisi parabolicè, seu virtuti in perfectissima effigie repræsentandæ, seu vitiorum tetro ad vivum exprimendo..." Examples include the parables of Jotham in Judges 9:7, of Nathan in 2 Samuel 12, and many similar ones in both the Old and New Testament. That is also my view. I believe it, therefore I speak so. But if that is now spoken irreverently against the Scripture, and my book must therefore be banned, the Professor was the first. Why then was his book not banned first?

But the difficulty lies in the words hell, chains, and darkness. Among the Hebrews, all three signify Death. So the meaning can be that as punishment for their disobedience and ungratefulness, they died in a singular way as an example to others. This is said most powerfully with such figurative reasoning to move the mind.

That I here present another view from Dassion than what is usually found among interpreters will not be the issue, but rather that I perhaps...