Dutch Reformed Church

“ No body of Christians on the North American continent entered more profoundly in mind, or realized more fully in practice, the spiritual democracy of believers than the people of the Reformed Dutch Church. The names of pickaninnies and papooses, adult slaves and warriors, servants, “proselytes,” black, red, and white, on the pages of Dutch Church registers sparkle among the undying glories of American colonial life. ”

“ I do not find so full provisions made for seating children in Dutch Reformed churches as in Puritan meeting-houses. A wise saying of Martin Luther’s was “Public sermons do very little edify children”—perhaps the Dutch agreed with him. As the children were taught the Bible and the catechism every day in the week, their spiritual and religious schooling was sufficient without the Sunday sermon,—but, of course, if they were not in the church during services, they would “talk of vane Things and run Raesses.” ”

“ Returning to America, he became associate pastor with his father in New York. In 1664 he was one of the Dutch commissioners that prepared the terms of surrender to the English, and it is probable that the rights of the Dutch Reformed church were preserved through his influence. He returned to Holland in 1668, and, being "well skilled in both Dutch and English," served the English and Scotch churches in Flushing and Dordrecht from 1685 till 1700, when he became pastor emeritus. ”

“ When it is remembered that the predikants of the Dutch Reformed Church in the old Republics dare not pronounce the benediction on a coloured congregation, we think it will not be considered unfair to say that the calculatingly outrageous treatment of the coloured races of South Africa by the Boer section of that community is mainly due from the sanction it receives from the Dutch Reformed Church. ”

“ Far more significant for Dutch religious life are the other two-thirds of the population, Protestants to the back-bone. The former State Church, the Netherlands Reformed Church, was left in a most awkward position when, in 1795, disestablishment was forced upon it. Up till 1848, when Jann Rudolf Thorbecke saved Holland and the Royal House from another revolution, by imposing a Liberal constitution upon the reluctant King William II, the Netherlands Reformed Church had no sound, well-regulated status ”

“ No coloured person, being a member of the Dutch Reformed Church of the Colony or Province of the Cape of Good Hope, shall be entitled, by reason of such membership or of the passing of this Act or of the union brought about thereby, to claim membership of the united church in the event of his finding himself, or of his being or becoming resident, in any of the adjacent Provinces and so long as he shall remain without the boundaries of the Province of the Cape of Good Hope ”

“ All important is the history of "the Reformed Church in America," because the highest Dutch social life was closely associated with the Church, and was from the first found in its largest and fullest form in the congregations. The Church nourished a spirit of democracy, besides maintaining the schools and culture after the English conquered New Netherland and the royal governors abolished the public schools. ”

“ In reply to so much of this paper as respects the establishment of individual churches, we must say that while we appreciate the peculiar circumstances of our brethren, and sympathize with their perplexities, yet it has always been considered a matter of course that ministers, receiving their commission through our Church, and sent forth under the auspices of our Board, would, when they formed converts from the heathen into an ecclesiastical body, mould the organization into a form approaching as nearly as possible that of the Reformed Dutch Churches in our own land. ”

“ The Rationalistic “Illumination” outside of Germany.―In Amsterdam, in A.D. 1791, a Restored Lutheran Church or Old Light was organized on the occasion of the intrusion of a rationalistic pastor. It now numbers eight Dutch congregations with 14,000 adherents and 11 pastors. Under the name of Christo Sacrum some members of the French Reformed church at Delft, in A.D. 1797, founded a denomination which received adherents of all confessions, holding by the divinity of Christ and His atonement, and treating all confessional differences as non-essential and to be held only as private opinions. ”

“ Similar events occurring upon the following day at Harlem, accompanied with some bloodshed—for which, however, the perpetrator was punished with death—opened the great church of that city to the Reformed congregations, and closed them for a time to the Catholics.
Thus, the cause of the new religion was triumphant in Holland and Zealand, while it was advancing with rapid strides through the other provinces. Public preaching was of daily occurrence everywhere. On a single Sunday; fifteen different ministers of the Reformed religion preached in different places in Antwerp. ”

“ These Swedish and Reformed modes of congregational organization were here fully in operation in the territory on which our earliest German congregations were established.
3. The Lutheran Congregations at Amsterdam and London. The constitution of the Lutheran Church at Amsterdam is the most important and influential original source of Lutheran congregational organizations in America. It is the model from which the constitution of the Dutch Lutheran Churches in New York and New Jersey are directly derived. ”

“ The Roman Catholic Church, the only episcopacy in Holland, numbers only two sections: those--the majority--who admit the infallibility of the Pope, and those--a small minority--who, although recognizing the Pope as chief of the Church, do not agree with the decisions of the Vatican Council of 1870, proclaiming this papal infallibility. The Roman Catholic Church is a tolerably prospering institution, thanks to the absolute freedom which it, like all the sister Churches, enjoys in Holland, where, ever since the revolution of 1795, a State Church has been an unknown thing. ”

“ Meantime, care for the interests of the Christian Church in general and the Reformed in particular, quickening of Christian religion and morality, increase of religious knowledge, preservation of order and unity, and furtherance of love for King and Fatherland—are ever the main object of all to whom any ecclesiastical office is entrusted, and no one can be rejected as a member or a teacher who, complying with all other requirements, declares himself to be convinced in his own conscience that in compliance with the above-named principles, he may belong to the Reformed Church of the Netherlands. ”

“ The Lutherans in Holland sent a clergyman, Ernestus Goetwater, to New Amsterdam, to organize a church. The Directors wrote,
"It is our intention to permit every one to have freedom within his own dwelling, to serve God in such manner as his religion requires, but without authorizing any public meetings or conventicles." ”

“ Without undervaluing the influence of the German Churches, and particularly of the garrison- preaching of the German military chaplains in the Netherlands, it may be safely asserted that the early Reformers of the provinces were mainly Huguenots in their belief: The Dutch Church became, accordingly, not Lutheran, but Calvinistic, and the founder of the commonwealth hardly ceased to be a nominal Catholic before he became an adherent to the same creed. ”

“ There were also powerful representatives of the reform movement in the Netherlands during this period, who pointed to Scripture and faith in the crucified Saviour as the only radical cure for the corruptions of the church. While Wiclif and Huss attached themselves to the Augustinian theology, the Dutchmen gave themselves to quiet, calm contemplation and the acquirement of practical religious knowledge. In Italy too a reformer appeared of a strongly evangelical spirit, who did not however show the practical sense of those of the Netherlands. ”

“ The English passed a law that each foreign workman should take and train one English apprentice. As a result, fifty thousand English lads were trained, not only mechanically, but also in the principles of these Dutch Anabaptists. This spiritual training led to the Puritan revolution in England and to the greater movement across the seas. Each of these Dutch Baptist churches was a republic in itself, independent with its popularly elected officers, deacons, and elders. They held, as a cardinal doctrine, the separation of Church and State. ”

“ Holland is a country largely divided between the two religions; rather more than half its people are Protestant, rather less than half are Catholic. The whole point of the Dutch example to a man trained in true history is the way in which a State which was, in its origins, artificially created by a revolt against taxation, next strengthened by a violently anti-Catholic temper, maintained for generations by an exclusion of Catholics from power, has come now to something like a balance of the two cultures. ”

“ For the rest, the relations between Church and people in the fifteenth century were in the Netherlands affected by the general causes in operation throughout western Europe. The deep religious feeling of the people remained proof against the excesses alike and the shortcomings of the clergy; against a corruption which led even Philip the Good to approve of the attempt to divert the administration of charity into lay hands, and a license of life on the part of both seculars and regulars which defied repeated attempts at reform. ”

“ The Kingdom of Holland.―In the prevailingly Reformed national church rationalism and latitudinarian supernaturalism had to such an extent blotted out the ecclesiastical distinctions between Reformed, Remonstrants, Mennonites, and Lutherans, that the clergy of one party would unhesitatingly preach in the churches of the others. Then rose the poet Bilderdijk, driven from political into religious patriotism, to denounce with glowing fury the general declension from the orthodoxy of Dort. ”

“ The Dutch Protestants, as I remarked at Utrecht, have shown singular efficiency in denuding religion of its external graces and charm. There is no church so beautiful but they would reduce it to bleak and arid cheerlessness. Place even the cathedral of Chartres in a Dutch market-place, and it would be a whitewashed desert in a week, while little shops and houses would be built against its sacred walls. There is hardly a great church in Holland but has some secular domicile clinging like a barnacle to its sides. ”

“ The Dutch Church in North America has always manifested an enlarged Christian spirit, and therefore we cannot doubt but that she will approve of an organization by which the churches here, which are one in doctrine and one in spirit, may also be one in ecclesiastical matters. Neither do we doubt but that the English Presbyterian Church will also approve of the same course. We do not know as much of that Church as we hope to know in the future. Yet we know enough of her already to love her. But if separation must come, let not our Church bear the responsibility. ”

“ The Dutch had adopted the Calvinist model of the Reformed faith, and had accepted in its crudest form the doctrine of predestination. But there arose a revolt against this doctrine in the University of Leyden; for universities in the Old World have always been the nurseries of theological novelties, or, as the adherents of the old tenets call them, heresies. ”

“ And while, on the other hand, in the Reformed state church of Holland, theological studies, leaning upon German science, have taken a liberal and even radical destructive course, the not inconsiderable Roman Catholic population has fallen, under Jesuit leading, more and more into bigoted obscurantism. ”

“ Political as well as religious sympathies were enlisted in favour of this freer ecclesiastical tendency. The Dutch War of Independence was a struggle for religious freedom against Spanish Catholic fanaticism. The young republic therefore became the first home of religious toleration, which was scarcely reconcilable with a strict and exclusive Calvinism.―Meanwhile within the Calvinistic church a controversy arose, which divided its adherents in the Netherlands into two parties. ”

“ In order the more successfully to withstand the Reformation, the four original bishoprics were increased by the addition of fourteen new bishoprics, and three were raised into archbishoprics, Utrecht, Mechlin, and Cambray. But even these measures failed in securing the end desired, because the Dutch, even those who hitherto had remained faithful to the Romish Church, saw in them simply an instrument for advancing Spanish despotism.―In A.D. 1523 Luther’s translation of the N.T. had already been rendered into Dutch and printed at Amsterdam. ”

“ The basis of the treaty was, as usual, the nominal supremacy of the Catholic religion, with toleration for the Reformed worship. The necessary effect would be, as in Harlem, Utrecht, and other places, to establish the new religion upon an entire equality with the old. It was arranged that no congregations were to be disturbed in their religious exercises in the places respectively assigned to them. Those of the Reformed faith were to celebrate their worship without the walls. ”

“ It is difficult to lose the feeling of disproportion between the size of the Dutch churches and that of the villages and congregations. The villages are so small, the churches so vast. It is as though the churches were built to compensate for the absence of hills. From any one spire in Holland one must be able to see almost all the others.
The stained glass in Edam’s great church has reference rather to Holland’s temporal prosperity than to religion. ”

“ It is the man himself who has done so much for emancipating the individual, and placing him upon the immovable truth of the Bible.
Very recently the Church of Holland has applied herself to earnest, practical work. Her evangelizing efforts [Pg 383] will now compare favorably with those of French Protestantism. In no country have the congregations been more attached to the clergy than in Holland. But the intimacy has diminished the development of individual labor and responsibility. Everything was left to the pastor. Religion consisted in being preached to and edified. ”