THE history of this good man, though properly belonging to the annals of the Dutch Reformed Church, is necessary for our understanding some of the events which will be related in the following sketches of German Protestantism.
A very quiet man was Dr. Gisbert Voet. He was not amongst those known to history by the name of " the quiet in the land," for this name was given later on ; but in many respects such as they were was he ; and we may, in fact, trace their existence in part to his life and labours.
Born at Heusden, in Holland, in the year 1588, he was for sixty-five years a minister of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands.
Except for his influence upon those who followed him, his history concerns us but little. Perhaps to himself his life seemed scarcely quiet. He was deeply concerned about the many evil doctrines and evil ways of men.
First of all, as belonging to the Calvinistic Reformed Church, he grieved deeply over that which he called the Lutheran heresy. To a member of the Reformed Church, a Lutheran was little less to be dreaded than a Catholic, or even a Jesuit.
He grieved over the evil teachings of Arminius and of Arminians.
He grieved perpetually over the dancing, gambling, drinking, play-going Christians all around him.
He grieved most especially over those who were led away by the theories of a rationalist-Catholic
Frenchman, who had taken up his abode in Holland. For did not this faithless man declare, that only that which we distinctly and clearly perceive can we recognize as true, and that our mind therefore is the test and measure of truth ?
" Where, then," said Voet most truly, " is there any room for faith in God ? Prove something to me on the evidence of my reason and my senses only, and you render it impossible for me to believe it except as I believe that two and three make five."
Therefore could this Frenchman, Rene Descartes, be only regarded as a troubler of the minds of men, by turning them away from God to themselves.
But Dr. Voet could not convince men of this by his learning and his labours, and as time went on his life and strength were spent more and more completely in arguments and controversies and disputes, and also in fruitless remonstrances against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
"Gospel-preachers," he said, " are opposed by their own church members, and regarded as fanatical or newfangled, if they bring Scripture to bear upon Sunday-breaking, dances, ballets, plays, gambling, excessive finery, duels, violence, immorality, drunkenness, dice-playing, simony, and the customs and observances of Rome."
But how were matters to be mended ? There were the Anabaptists, it is true, who set their face against all these things, but they were wild and fanatical, and dissenters from the established Church. They too could only be a grief and sorrow, in another way, to good Dr. Voet.
" There is nothing to be done," was the conclusion he came to, " but to follow precisely and absolutely the laws and commandments we find in the Bible."
Thus arose the word " Precision ;" and we may remember that our great-grandfathers and grandmothers in England talked of "precise people," who wore plain bonnets, and never went to balls or plays. But in England the word • Puritan was more commonly used, or in later days Methodist.
Such a grave and sad Precisian, was Dr. Voet. He laboured hard, and he did not bethink him that his labour was not only the harder, but the more hopeless, because it was with the law, not with the gospel, that he betook himself to his task. He did believe the gospel so far that he knew and taught that we are saved from eternal condemnation by the blood of Jesus.
But how are we to be saved day by day from our sins ? " By keeping God's law," said Dr. Voet.
Thus, side by side with the English Puritans, grew up a large body of Dutch and German "Precisians." In most respects they were very much alike. They were both a God-fearing, Bible-reading folk, distinguished from their neighbours by their strict, austere lives, their avoidance of worldly amusements and luxuries, their plain dress, their delight in prayer, preaching, and godly conversation.
The world has described them as coarse, uncultured people, insensible to, or even hating, all that is beautiful or lovely or tender in things around them. But we find that even a tinker amongst them had the soul of a poet, and the eye of a painter, and as we learn to know them, we see that they refused most of the harmless pleasures of the world, because they were pleasures defiled by contact with sin, and debased into channels for lust and godlessness.
The world made merry over their separation from the ungodly, and over their rigid rules, and their plain clothes. Perhaps the fact that they were equally plain and simple in their worship, and that they had an abhorrence of Romish idolatry, led the world then, and the world now, to regard their austere dress, and their unworldly lives, as a species of ultra-Protestantism. But if we trace back the Precisian and Puritan teaching on these points, we find that it sprang from a source further back than the Reformation, or even than Catholicism, though it was from Catholicism that it flowed onwards into the Protestant communities.
The source is to be found in the New Testament. We are there taught separation from the world, simplicity in dress, self-denial in needless luxuries, and moderation in all things. But as time went on, and the Church lost her first love, and sank into the ways of the world, these commandments of the Lord became a burden too heavy for the worldly Christians who had but a name to live and were dead.
A distinction was therefore made between ordinary Christians who were not bound by such unwelcome rules, and the " religious" who were bound not only to follow the teaching of Christ in this respect, but to add to it endless rules of austerity, the super-sanctity of some thus making up for the semi-sanctity of others. The " religious " were taught to mortify themselves as regards all pleasure and enjoyment, whether worldly or merely human, and in a good sense, natural. They were expected to wear a plain religious dress, conform to rigid rules, and be literally separated from the world by stone walls. Thus asceticism took the place of Christian holiness, and the simple unworldliness and self-denial of the early days was buried beneath a pile of will-worship and voluntary humility, more satisfying to the flesh.
When we come to the time of the Reformation, we find that many awoke to the fact that not only some, but all believers, are chosen out of the world for God—set apart for Him, and consecrated by Him for His worship and service. The holiness and unworldliness, therefore, which had been supposed to attach to a certain class of Christians, were owned to be, not the penance, but the privilege, of all the children of God.
Calvin, who knew and taught this truth, so long lost and forgotten, had nevertheless shaped his thoughts, as to holiness of life and practice, according to the teaching of his early days, when he too had been a Romanist, and had reverenced the religious dresses and the austere rules of monastic life. He, therefore, applied to all believers, rules and precepts which were taken rather from medieval asceticism than from the New Testament.
And the world that had looked with respect at the monks and nuns in religious dresses, who were making up for the shortcomings of their neighbours, raised the cry of fanaticism and hypocrisy, when the Puritans and Precisians appeared in their plain clothes, bearing witness to the unwelcome truth that there is no middle ground between that of separation to God, and separation from Him.
It must also be remembered that another point of similarity existed between the Catholics and the Puritans ; both sought for holiness more or less by human endeavours, not knowing that those under grace are no longer under the law. And, therefore, rigid rules were welcomed in both cases by those who desired to live a life of devotion.
Neither to the Puritans, nor to those who derided them, did it ever occur, that their austerities and their plain clothes were to be traced further back than their teacher John Calvin ; back to Francis of Assisi, to Benedict of Monte Casino, and to many an ignorant and devoted monk. These medianial "Puritans " had been canonized for the practices which, faintly reproduced in the Puritans of Protestantism, appeared to the world unspeakably ludicrous. Yet the world that derided the Puritans retained a lingering reverence for the old " saints " —saints not only unadorned, but too frequently unwashed.
And so days and years passed by in the life of good Dr. Voet, and men grew the more wicked, and strayed away the more after popish priests and French philosophers, and after lusts and pleasures of all sorts. And Dr. Voet grew more and more sad. For he was a true and faithful servant to his Master, and he longed for better things, and he sighed, and mourned, and preached, and wrote, and read his Bible, and his Thomas a Kempis, and the great light and power and blessedness which some have known were rarely known to him.
And you and I would perhaps have felt sad and sleepy had it been our lot to sit pricier his pulpit, and we should have put his books on some top shelf, and regarded him as a dull and ponderous man, whose heart was dried up by arguments and controversies.
But there was One who loved him, and owned his laborious endeavours to weed and prune the neglected vineyard.
As he lay dying, he looked up and said, " Oh, a thousand times, a thousand times do I long for Thee, my Jesus ! When wilt Thou come ? When wilt Thou rejoice my heart ? When wilt Thou satisfy my soul with Thyself, my Lord ?"
And the Lord answered and heard, and took him to Himself, where we shall meet him and rejoice with him.
His portrait hangs in the council-room of the senate at Utrecht, and there we may yet see " his high forehead, his piercing eye, his finely-cut mouth, and the iron firmness of every feature."
There were some then, and some since, who regarded Dr. Voet as a mystic. His last words may explain this. Sound doctrine, and strict life, were to most of the true believers of those days the whole of Christianity. But the intercourse of the heart with God had suspicion of something dreamy, unreal, imaginative, attached to it.
It is a short and simple way of bringing a thing into disrepute, to give it a name. It does not matter whether the name has any perceptible meaning. Any pronounceable letters, joined together, will answer the purpose.
The word mystic, therefore, which had only a very vague meaning, was very serviceable. To stray from the path of orthodox doctrine and " precise " life, into visionary notions of communion between the soul and God, was to be a mystic. Such could only be classed with those who see visions and dream dreams, who believe in ghosts, and witches, and charms, and omens, and the philosopher's stone, and depart from all the rules of common-sense, not to say of sound religion, as we are taught it in our catechisms, and by our pastors and teachers.
Is it then true that between the redeemed soul and the Saviour, between the child and the Father, there is none but imaginary intercourse ?
Is the Comforter, who came down on the Day of Pentecost, gone back into the depths of heaven ? Or does He still dwell in the hearts of those who are beloved of God ?
If these things are true, if the promise of God is sure, we need not be surprised that the dry and controversial Dr. Voet, who had within him the well of living water, allowed it at times to be seen springing up, and thus bringing everlasting life to souls around him.
There were others such as he was in this respect. There had always been Protestants who were not only Protestants, but Christians.
We cannot stop to consider many of them, but upon some we must spend a little while, in order to understand the history that follows.