THOUGH , as we have seen, the labours of Dr. Voet and Dr. Koch made but small impression upon the careless and the ungodly around them, they were used by God to stir up some who went out to seek the lost sheep of Christ.
If Dr. Voet seemed dull and dry to some, he was the object of the love, and even of the enthusiasm, of a young student who attended his classes at Utrecht.
This young man, Jodocus von Lodensteyn, of a noble family of Delft, born in the year 1620, appears to have been truly converted to God by the teaching of Dr. Voet.
He afterwards spent two years at Franeker as a pupil of Dr. Koch. Whilst at Franeker he made the acquaintance of a Scotch Puritan, called Amesius, and determined to travel in England and Scotland to learn more amongst the Puritans and Covenanters. But this plan was never carried out, for he was chosen, at the age of twenty-four, as preacher at Zoetemer, in Holland.
After various moves he was at last placed at Utrecht, where his beloved Dr. Voet was still living and teaching, and he rejoiced to spend his last years with this friend of his youth.
He survived Dr. Voet only one year, dying at Utrecht in the year 1677. " Father Lodcnsteyn," as he was called, was not a learned theologian, like his masters. His desire was rather to win souls for Christ, and care for them as a pastor. Therefore, besides his regular sermons, he had conversational Bible-readings and prayer meetings every Friday. These meetings were then becoming widely spread in Holland, and later in Germany and England, and are known to us as " conventicics." Of their origin we shall hear later on.
Many Christian students took part in these meetings, and as Father Lodensteyn's object was simply and only to awaken dead souls, and build up living ones in the love of Christ, we are not surprised to hear that " at Utrecht, as in all other places where he laboured, the green leaves budded forth, and a new life began."
For the good man's life spoke as loudly as his lips. He was simple and self-denying. If he bought meat it was generally for the poor. He laboured from early morning till late at night, taking for his recreation the writing of hymns. He was never married, and considered that a single life had many advantages. He went so far as to wish that convents had been only reformed, not abolished, for he thought they might be quiet retreats for many who wished to live for God.
Many of the old convents had been turned into parsonages, others into schools. And when Father Lodensteyn saw the schoolboys spinning their " monks " (so they called their humming-tops) in the deserted cloisters, he would feel a mournful longing that living monks, but at the same time Puritan monks, who believed as Calvin believed, should be pacing those cloisters as in olden days.
He preached with great power, and his fine voice was fitted for the old cathedrals and churches, in which crowds gathered to hear him.
But he would say a few words before the sermon, to entreat those amongst his hearers, who had more grace than he had, " no doubt there are many such," added the simple man, "to pray earnestly for him that God would fill his heart, and open his lips." " So must the apostles have preached," said some who heard him.
The services were very simple—he had no choir and no vestments to attract the crowds who came. " The pure gospel," he said, " and the truth of God, has in itself so much marrow and fatness, so much spirit and life, that no man need paint and colour it to give it force and charm. Without adornment, it is able to pierce through heart and conscience; therefore, all we have to do is follow the will of God in preaching His truth, and be utterly blind to all results, leaving that to God, who will give us power to help each soul that has ears to hear, and also to reform the church which needs it."
For the deep fall of the professing church, especially of the beloved Reformed Church of his fatherland, was a deep and bitter sorrow to Father Lodensteyn.
" They boast of being reformed," he would say ;
" but when we look back to the first days of the Church, to the time of her first love and her bitter persecutions, and compare that time with this time of lukewarmness and carelessness, of apostasy and death, then do we see the desperate need of repentance and self-abasement. The mockery of the world is richly deserved by those who can yet defend the Reformed Church, or dare to boast of her triumphs; they should rather be weeping over the deformed Church, and making bitter lamentations. In the sixteenth century more stress was laid upon the doctrines of godliness than upon godliness itself, whereas the aim and object of the revival of the preaching of justification and grace should be the revival of Christian life in power and holiness."
Therefore did he preach constantly and fervently a continued reformation, a second reformation—the reformation of worldly Christendom, a reformation of life and practice, through the new birth, by the power of the Spirit of God ; for "in what," he would say, " is a reformed Christian, not yet born again, better than an atheist ? So is the Reformed Church outwardly flourishing and inwardly dead. It has a worldly piety, and an outside zeal for the worship and service of -God, but it is in vain that I labour to break through the unspeakable carelessness and coldness beneath. It is fallen into a deep sleep, drowned in luxury and pleasure, full of delusions, vanity, self-admiration; and the desecration of all that is holy. People take the outward national church for the true Church, and spend their strength in propping it up ; but of the spiritual church, the hidden Body of Christ, they know nothing, and care nothing for it. They have cast off the rule of the Pope, but have not cared to guard the Church from all other rule. The teachers are mostly earthly-minded and ignorant, careless of the flock, only seeking to please men by soft, sugary, ornamental preaching, instead of waking up their sinful hearts to repentance. The leaders are misleaders, and if any one lifts his voice, and speaks of the need of reformation, he is pursued, like the scapegoat, with blows and curses."
It also grieved Father Lodensteyn very deeply, that these easy-going Christians were content to do nothing for the conversion of Jews, heathens, and papists.
"The papists, on the other hand," he said, "allow themselves to be stirred up by a lying spirit to spread their errors in all directions. And reformed Christians sit still, and amuse themselves with their evil pleasures. Look at them in their dances, with bodies half uncovered ! Do such people look like living representations of the Lord Jesus ? Is not the Reformed Church a carcass without a spirit ? And a carcass will not hold together long. The separation must come. For it will not remain possible, for those who are truly living souls, to remain mixed up with the corruption, and when they leave it must fall to pieces. To have light and to have none of the Spirit of God, is a call for awful judgment. I may well say the Reformed Church is a Babylon of Babylons, a thousandfold worse than the Babylon of popery, because of the light she has, and uses not.
" Protestants have left the Roman Church, the spiritual Babylon, in order to become the fleshly Babylon. Their respectable, church-going lives are, in general, as devoid of the Spirit of God as the lives of heathens and papists. Their church-going is only an appendix to their worldly occupations, and most often an opportunity for sleeping. Amongst the rich and great, it would be a sort of disgrace to know God, or fear and honour Him. And so in all classes God is absent from their daily lives. Were it otherwise, would they not speak of Him in their intercourse with one another ? Would they not read their Bibles to know more of Him ? As it is, they are commonly in complete ignorance of the way of salvation.
" Here we see the consequence of the evil habit of preachers, who speak to all alike as if they were God's people, including the worldly, the lukewarm, the formalists, and those who have no visible signs of holiness. And, to go further back to the cause of this useless preaching, we find that when the preachers were at college they were taught theology, and learnt nothing. of Christian faith and life."
And he further explained, that a cause of this dead Christianity was that people were perfectly satisfied with themselves as long as they were not criminals who had to answer for their misdeeds before a magistrate.
" You baptized, sacrament—taking people," he would say, "know that you are not Christians at all. I often think, Would the Lord Jesus allow, if He were here amongst us, that His holy things should be thus profaned before His eyes ? Oh, what unworthy, self-indulgent, ignorant men do we not see admitted to the Holy Supper of the Lord ! Did their teachers but take the trouble to go and find out what they are, how many would they find fit to be there ? But no, this is a trouble they decline to take. It is just as if the Lord Jesus had given them up to their own ways, and had said, ' Let them come and go as they will—the bands are broken—I have left them to themselves.'"
Soon after a severe illness which Father Lodensteyn had in the year 1665, he felt so keenly this desecration of the Lord's Table, that he made a solemn vow never again to take part in it. He abstained therefore from all communion for the remainder of his life. But he still remained the preacher and pastor of his church in Utrecht. He was called to account by the burgomaster for this conduct, which caused the greatest consternation amongst the citizens. But he answered, shortly and decidedly, "I beg that nothing may be said further on this subject. I have scruples of conscience, and he who doubts is condemned if he partakes."
The example of Lodensteyn was followed by great number of earnest and pious Christians, who received the nickname of Lodensteyners. They were also nicknamed "the earnest" or "the nice."
They are thus described by a Dutch writer : " The so-called Lodensteyners are people who are violently opposed to hypocrites ; who are not perfect, but desire to be perfect ; who will have nothing to do with worldly amusements, and with the beaten path of the Christianity of to-day ; who are not contented with things as they are, but seek for an inner reformation ; who gladly consort with pious people and do not sit in the seat of the scornful.
"And because they separate themselves from worldly and fleshly men who are only Christians in name, they are an offence to the churchgoers who have not the Spirit of God, and are more hated and ill thought of by such, than people who are living in open vice. And for this reason, that open sinners leave these respectable nominal Christians in peace, and do not cast into shade their little glimmer of light by any light more full and true. Just for the same reason did the Pharisees hate the Lord Jesus."
Father Lodensteyn himself won his full share of this hatred. "The whole swarm of the unregenerate," he says, " of the worldly-minded, of seekers after honour, of lovers of show and splendour, of the vain, of those whose god is their belly, of the lawless and disorderly, of the respectable and would-be pious, were up in arms against me."
Not only so, but they left no stone unturned to stop his preaching. His sayings and doings were misrepresented. He was accused of all manner of evil. " He is a Spiritualist, an Anabaptist, a Dissenter, a Quaker," said the Christian world of Utrecht.
But Father Lodensteyn pursued the even tenor of his way. He remained a member of the Calvinistic Church which he still hoped to reform. Many others left it. He said, "I did not advise them to do it, but it ought to make those who remain consider their ways. And it is a heavy judgment upon this Church that such people as they are, can no longer remain in her. They go out, leaving behind them, amongst us who remain, all that is of the world—none of that do they take with them—the costly feasts, the expensive clothes, the splendid houses, the pomp and luxury, and the outward forms. Thus the Lord Himself is withdrawing from us, though the form of worship goes on."
The name of Father was given to this good man out of love and affection, it was not on account of his age ; for he was only fifty-seven when he was called away to be with Christ. He died August 6th, 1677.
Many who loved him stood weeping round his dying-bed. " Why do you weep ?" he said. "I am lying on roses. It is so sweet to me to do the will of my God."
Four hours before his death he said, " If this is death it is very easy." Soon after he said, "I am full of thoughts," but we know not what they were, for he spoke no more.
Though he was not of the unhappy number of those of whom it could be universally, and therefore fatally, said, that they lived respected, and died lamented, he was mourned deeply and lovingly by many to whom his words had brought eternal life and peace. We may love him also, and be thankful for his labours.
At the same time it may be seen, even from this short account, that Lodensteyn, like Dr. Voet, was seeking to reform the Church rather by the law than the gospel. He never knew whilst here below the glorious truth of the Christian's standing in Christ. Do we, to whom it has been taught, desire as fervently as he did, that the Church should return to her first love, and walk worthily of her heavenly calling?