DR. KOCH, who was born in 1603, is one of these.
He too had been strictly and precisely brought up in the Calvinistic Reformed Church. His early home was at Bremen, afterwards at Hamburg, where he learnt Hebrew from a Jew, but later on he went to study in West Friesland.
After holding various professorships, he at last settled down as professor of dogmatic theology at Leyden.
Koch is to be remembered for the devotion of his life to the earnest and thorough study of the Bible. " The innermost spring of his life and work," says one of his historians, " was his unconditional subjection of mind to the word of God, as he under- stood it, by means of an enlightened conscience and earnest prayer, ' for,' he said, 'the conscience, to which the truth has been revealed, cannot err, but unen- lightened reason is sure to err. And the proof of the corruption and hardness of the heart is, that it prefers to follow its own inventions and imaginations to the voice of conscience.'" The teaching of Descartes was therefore, to Dr. Koch, only an example of unenlightened reason.
And yet Dr. Koch himself, strange as it may seem, was a grief and sorrow to good Dr. Voet. Why was this ? It was because Dr. Voet considered that the Bible was to be interpreted according to the teaching of the Church ; that is to say, of the Reformed Calvinistic Church of the Netherlands. And therefore if Dr. Voet wished to understand a passage, he would take down some of his ponderous volumes, and read the interpretation given by orthodox divines, or he would carefully compare it with the Heidelberg catechism.
But Dr. Koch, on the contrary, searched through the Bible itself, and said that the meaning must be found by comparing one passage with another, and not taking them out of their connection. "And if we need a teacher," he said, "let us go to Christ, who has said that we need not that any man teach us, for the anointing that we have received of Him teacheth us all things." That is to say, that Dr. Koch would compare all human teaching with the Bible, and believe it as far as he found it there.
In consequence of this, not only Dr. Voct, but many orthdox divines, suspected Dr. Koch of atheism, heresy, Pelagianism, Socinianism, popery, Judaism, and infidelity. They said he opened the door to fanaticism and unbelief of all sorts.
But Dr. Koch maintained, on the other hand, that to trust to the teaching of the Church, if thereby you mean not simply believing persons taught by the Spirit, but a national institution, is the sure way to all these evil results.
"For," he said, "the Reformed Church, and indeed all other Churches, consist in great measure of baptised heathen people who are enclosed within their limits. The Churches are all alike more or less corrupt in their doctrine and in their practice. In fact there is little hope of their restoration. They consist mostly of those who have no love to God, and much love of the world, and consequently, taking them as a whole, they are like fallen Jerusalem, which the Lord called Sodom and Gomorrah."
After our little glance at the life and manners of all classes in Germany, we are compelled to own that Dr. Koch came to correct conclusions.
Thus far do we need to bear in mind who and what was Dr. Koch. We shall hear of him again. We may remember him, and also good Dr. Voet, with love and respect.
At the same time, whilst Dr. Voet was arguing against the evils around him, and Dr. Koch was diving into the difficulties of obscure passages in the Bible, the millions around them, with hungry souls and sorrowful hearts, gained but little at the time from their labours. God, who cared for them, was preparing other messengers, and preparing them by means of such as Dr. Voet and Dr. Koch, to meet the need of the sad and sinful.