which they received the name
"counter-Remonstrants." The States-General passed an edict tolerating
both parties and forbidding further dispute, but the conflict of views
would not down. It spread like a prairie fire, became complicated with
political issues, had its martyrdoms, and produced far-reaching results
and consequences.[16] At the Synod of Dort, on April 24, 1619, the
Remonstrants were declared guilty of falsifying religion and of
destroying the unity of the Church, and were deposed from all their
ecclesiastical and academic offices and positions. Two hundred were
deposed from the ministerial office for life, and one hundred were
banished.

Among the number of deposed ministers was Christian {115} Sopingius, the
pastor of Warmund, and the "Remonstrants," who formed an important part
of his congregation, were left without the opportunity of hearing any
ministry of which they approved. In this strait Giesbert Van der Kodde,
an Elder in the Warmund church, took a bold step. He was the son of a
prosperous farmer who had given his children, John, William, Adrian, and
Giesbert, an unusually extended education. All the sons learned Latin,
Italian, French, and English, while William (known in the scholarly world
as Gulielmus Coddaeus) was a Hebrew and Oriental scholar of note, and at
the age of twenty-six was made Professor of Hebrew in the University of
Leyden. They owed the course of their religious development and their
particular bent of mind to the writings of men like Sebastian Castellio;
Coornhert, whose views have been given above; and Jacobus Acontius, the
Italian humanist, who laid down the principles that no majority can make
a binding law in matters of faith, that only God's Spirit in the hearts
of men can certify what is the truth, and that "Confessions of Faith"
have been the ruinous source of endless divisions in the Church. Deeply
imbued with the ideas of these spiritual reformers, and in sympathy as
they were with many of the views and practices of the Mennonites about
them, the Van der Kodde brothers decided, under the leadership of the
boldest and most conscientious of them, Giesbert, to come together
without any minister and hold a meeting of a free congregational type.
At first the meeting was probably held in Giesbert's house, and consisted
of readings from the Scripture, prayers, and the public utterance of
messages of edification by those who formed the group. A little later a
"Remonst