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

perhaps in these words I also speak quite irreverently of the holy Writer. But that cannot be what I say regarding the meaning of the words hell, chains, and darkness, for I have clearly enough proven them in that place. Also, it is no irreverence at all to say that God punishes disobedience and ungratefulness in a singular way as an example to others. It will then again come down to that verbloemde reden figurative reasoning that I see in the words of the Apostle. The Lords Deputies, so it seems, may smell no flowers in the Pleasure Garden of God's Word. Yet our own translators observe poetic modes and allegories in it, as they declare regarding the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, number 4. Are those not flowers? Yet they are such as more powerfully move the soul, as I say, and as I have just had Lord Spanheim testify. Is it irreverence to say that God has flowers in his garden that are so powerful in scent that they strike the human heart? Oh, what richer material would have been before me here to show my deepest reverence for the Lord's holy Word in the clearest way by picking these lovely flowers, if I were not currently in a hurry to proceed to further evidence! Thus our translators believe that they speak not at all irreverently, but indeed very reverently of the Holy Writers, when they observe the Song of Solomon as a spiritual flower garden of divine planting. For under the name (they say in the summary of that book) of the Bridegroom and the Bride, there are described in this Song of Solomon, under verbloemde woorden figurative or flowery words, the heartfelt love and excellent benefits of the Lord Christ, and so on. See there how figurative words belong to the power of divine reasoning, and consequently must also awaken the reader all the more to reverence, whereas they want to extract my irreverence from them.

This clearly reveals itself as being spoken according to the opinion of the Heathen, who attributed all unforeseen help to the Daimones spirits or minor deities, who steer the matters here below on behalf of the supreme Deity.

Because it does not depend on my own opinion here, which I declare there, I have no need to point my reader to the latest edition of my book. There I have expanded this passage somewhat further and thereby shown what moved me to speak thus. Moreover, I said it in my answer to the Articles of Alkmaar, in my Fourfold Responses, pages 11, 72. But as much as this shall serve as proof of my irreverence regarding the Holy Writers, great men who preceded me in speaking thus must excuse me. Cocceius, concerning what Paul spoke to those of Athens in Acts 17:23...