erim-Church_. This Church,
according to his programme, would accept as truth, and as true practice,
anything plainly and clearly taught in the canonical Scripture, but he
advised against using glosses and commentaries made by men, since that is
to turn from the sun to the stars and from the spring to the cistern.
This interim-Church was to have no authoritative teachers or preachers.
In place of official ministry, the members were to edify one another in
Christian love, with the reservation that they would welcome further
illumination out of the Scriptures wherever they have made a mistake or
gone wrong. All persons who confess God as Father, and Jesus Christ as
sent by God, and who in the power of faith abstain from sins, may belong
to this interim-Church. For the sake of those who are still weak and
spiritually immature, he allowed the use of ceremonies in the
interim-Church, but all ceremonies are held as having no essential
function for salvation, and the believer is at liberty to make use of
them or to abstain from using them as he prefers.[14]

II

Coornhert's proposed interim-Church, which at best was conceived as only
a temporary substitute for the true apostolic Church, for which every
spiritual Christian is a "waiter" or "seeker," found actual embodiment in
a very interesting movement of the early seventeenth {114} century, known
in Dutch history as the "Collegiants" or "Rynsburgers," which we shall
now proceed to study.[15] The Collegiants had their origin in one of the
stormiest of the many theological controversies which swept over the
Netherlands in this critical period of religious history, a controversy
arising over the views taught by Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609). The Dutch
Protestants who accepted his views presented a "Remonstrance" to the
States of Holland and Friesland in 1610, in which they formulated their
departure from strict, orthodox Calvinism. The "Remonstrance" contained
five main Articles: (1) that the divine decrees of predestination are
conditioned and not absolute; (2) that the atonement is in intention
universal; (3) that a man cannot of himself do anything good without
regeneration; (4) that though the Grace of God is a necessary condition
of human effort it does not act irresistibly in man; (5) that believers
are able to resist sin, but are not beyond the possibility of falling
from Grace. The opponents to these views, often called "Gomarists,"
issued a counter-blast from