The following message was given at Emanuel Baptist Church, Coconut Creek, Florida. All right, it's time for us to start our class. So let's begin our morning by seeking the Lord in prayer. Let's pray. Our Father, as we come before you this morning, we are very thankful for the blessings of this week. We thank you for your mercies to us throughout the week. We come today with great delight. We can say with the psalmist we trust that I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord. And we are glad today because you are our God and we are your people. We have been redeemed by the blood of your son. But also mingle with our gladness is the sadness of the recognition of our own continued struggles with remaining sin. And we ask, Father, that for Christ's sake you would pardon our iniquities and that you would not deal with us according to our sins, but according to your great mercy that you have given to us in Christ. We pray that you would give us understanding as we study these matters, that they would help us to be better Christians, better servants of Christ, and we pray for all of our Sunday school teachers as well, the classes that you would do the same, and that you would save our children. We pray in Christ's name, amen. All right. Mic loud? I think it's too loud, don't you? You don't think so? I just wonder if it's echo or what. For me, it sounds like it's like massively loud, but maybe not. Okay. All right, well. This is my time today to teach the adult Sunday school class, so I'm picking up with the history of the church, which we've been studying for some time now. This is actually Lesson 58 in the history of the church. And just to give you a brief review, we're now in this period of church history, what we're calling the Reformation period. And so far, we've considered the Reformation in Germany, in German-speaking Switzerland, Are you guys sure this mic's not too loud? It is too loud. It's like echoing through the building or something. Okay, the Reformation in German-speaking Switzerland, the Reformation in French-speaking Switzerland, the life and ministry of Calvin, the Radical Reformation in Europe, the Reformation in England, the Reformation in Scotland, the Reformation in France and the Netherlands, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, And then most recently, we're in Section 9, Progress, Developments, and Conflict, following the initial stages of the Reformation, and we just finished considering various developments in that second generation with regard to Lutheranism. And now we look more at the Reformed churches in that second generation. And that's what we're going to begin to look at today. All right? And let me just kind of introduce this section by quoting to you from Nick Needham and his history of the church. He says, the Reformed faith, commonly known as Calvinism, had established itself in the cities of Switzerland and in England, Scotland, the Dutch Republic, and parts of Germany with a significant minority in France. The original vision expressed by the first generation of pioneers, Ulrich Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, Martin Buecher, Peter Martyr, Vermigli, and John Calvin, and others, was in many ways, as he says, only the foundation. So in our lesson today, we begin to move on from this first generation to consider some of the key leaders and developments that soon followed. And this is often called the period of reformed orthodoxy, or the codification and systemization of the doctrines of the Reformation during this period after the initial breaking out of the Reformation. However, as we begin to approach this, we're not to think that Reformed Orthodoxy was monolithic. At times, there are frictions and differences that emerged, as we're going to see. And let me also clarify that our focus right now is going to be on the European continent, kind of following Needham's manner of a treatment of this. We're going to look at post-Reformation England, and then we'll look at post-Reformation Scotland after we look at Europe. Though I am going to introduce to us today the English theologian William Ames, and the reason is because he spent most of his ministry in Europe, and he had a leading role in some of the developments of European Reformed theology. But again, just kind of as an introduction, much of the Lutheran, like the Lutherans which we studied last time during this period, one of the contributions to the theological method, I still think the mic is too loud. Am I crazy or you guys? Maybe it's where I am. Am I right under a speaker or something? But it just seems really loud, okay, to me. When it's loud like that, I'm afraid to project my voice, so I'm gonna blow your eardrums out or something. I tend to have a pretty loud voice. I could probably do this without a mic, and you guys would be able to hear me, so it doesn't need to be up very loud. All right, anyway, so as I was saying, much like the Lutherans we saw in that second generation as we have the Lutheran orthodoxy period or the systemization of Lutheran doctrine, the reform during this period was also marked by the utilization of Aristotle. or more precisely, Aristotelian methods of analyzing things and organizing thoughts and analyzing subjects. Though with the Reformed churches, there also began to be a strong influence of the methods developed by the French Reformed thinker, Peter or Petrus, Remus. And Ramos developed a system of logical analysis governed in part by the concern for simplification and practical uses. As I've been reading various articles, scholarly articles about Ramos, he was really probably primarily a mathematician. He taught just about every subject. A very brilliant man in many ways, but he was concerned about the education he had received, that it was often too theoretical. It didn't really make an application to life and to practice. And so he developed this system of a logical analysis that was really governed by this desire for simplification. and the practical uses of knowledge, a concern to correct what he considered to be a breach between life and thought, theology and ethics, that too often mark Aristotelian approach. Though, just to say this from what I've read, I don't think it's really correct to say that that he was opposed to Aristotelian method. It was more an opposition to what he believed was the misinterpretation and misuse of Aristotle in the direction of an arid intellectualism. And again, we're not talking about Aristotelian philosophy in every sense, but in terms of the methods that are used to analyze and to break down topics and subjects and to arrive at conclusions from those, the logic. According to Ramos, The task in one's method of analyzing a subject was to classify concepts with a view to making it understandable and memorable. And that was accomplished by an orderly presentation of the subject, breaking things down into its various divisions and headings with an emphasis on the practical use of the subject. And you may recognize that language use, the practical use, if you've read the Puritans very much. This was a method that would have a huge influence on the English Puritans and on their style of writing and their style of preaching. And perhaps most prominently as it was channeled through one of the men we're going to be considering in a few moments, William Ames. So with this introduction, here's the approach that I want to take to this period. Again, mostly following the same approach taken by Needham. First, we're going to consider some of the key figures. period. And then we'll zero in on the theological controversies of this period. The big one, the most important one being the Armenian controversy that arose during this period. Now when it comes to considering key figures of this period there's so many of them, there's a lot of them that you know you have to kind of Juggle who are the most important ones that you want to focus on or we could be we could be spending, you know Days just looking at some of these important theologians that God raised up during this time So I have to be selective and the first man I want us to consider you definitely can't skip this guy is Theodore Beza Have you ever heard of Theodore Beza? Okay, you need to know about him if you haven't. He was a handsome young fella. That's when he was young. He didn't have other paintings of him when he was old. He didn't quite look like that, but who knows what he really looked like, but when you look at the paintings, though, even with him as an older man, the shape of his face is still the same and so forth, so they probably got it pretty much right. He was born in 1519. He died in 1605, roughly at the age of 86. So he lived a long life in a very important period of church history, especially a long life by the standards of the time. The tendency of life expectancies was much shorter than that in those days. He was Calvin's most distinguished disciple and he became Calvin's successor as the spiritual leader in Geneva. Now originally he was born into an aristocratic family in a village called Vézelay in Burgundy, France. His father was wealthy and was a descendant of one of the most prominent families in the area. And so he was able to give him a very good education, the best education available. His mother died when he was not quite three years old and one of his uncles who really took a liking to him actually adopted him as his own son. This uncle was a member of the Parliament of Paris and he saw to it that this precocious boy was given the best education that money could really buy at that time in history. And then eventually he studied under Melchior Volmar who was one of the famous Greek scholars at that time and he was in fact the same man who taught Calvin Greek. Now at that time Beza was a Roman Catholic but Volmar had embraced Reformation views and that did have an influence upon Beza. It did affect him even when he was under his tutelage and teaching but he still remained in the church, in the Roman Catholic Church. At the age of 20 he came to Paris and for many years he lived there kind of a carefree life as a noble. He had a private income. He didn't have to worry about money. He focused his energies on classical literature and he lived among the elite in Parisian society. In 1544, in the presence of two friends, he entered into what Schaaf describes as an irregular alliance with Claudine de Nozet, a burgher's daughter, promising her that when circumstances favored, he would publicly marry her. But they maintained this kind of secret kind of a marriage for a period of time. In 1558 he published a book of poems, some of which were of questionable morality. Some accused them of being perhaps a bit risque. But he received a lot of praise in worldly society and it really catapulted him to the rank of a first-class poet in the minds of many of that day. In fact, he's going to use these gifts later for the Reformation in writing some beautiful and putting together some of the psalter that became popular among the Reformed churches for singing hymns, psalms and worship. But while the praises were still ringing in his ears over his poetic works, Beza fell seriously ill and almost died. And it was not until after this near-death experience that his life was dramatically changed and he became serious about the gospel and the Protestant faith. Quoting from Schaff's description. Sober by his gaze into the eyes of death, his conscience rebuked him for his duplicity in receiving ecclesiastical benefices as if he was a son of the faithful son of the church, the Roman Catholic Church. Whereas he was at heart, in other words, he had already come to believe that Protestantism was correct. His conscience rebuked him for his cowardice in cloaking his real opinions, for his negligence in not keeping the promise he had voluntarily made to the woman he had secretly married four years before, and for the general condition of his private and public life. The teachings of Omar came back to him. This world seemed very hollow, its praises and honors very cloying. We don't use that word very much, but it means kind of sickly or nauseating. The call to a higher, purer, nobler life was heard, and he obeyed. And although only convalescent, still recovering from this illness, leaving father and fatherland, riches and honors, he fled from the city of his triumphs, Paris. and his trials, and taking Claudine Dinoze with him, crossed the border into Switzerland, and on October 28, 1548, entered the city of Geneva. So he was roughly about 29 years old when he had this conversion experience, when this happened. When Beza arrived in Geneva, his first business after greeting Calvin was to have a proper church marriage to Claudine. And then he began to look for employment. That led to him being persuaded by Pierre Varey, one of the reformers, to join him in the city of Lucerne. and there he became professor of Greek in the academy there for just a brief period of time. But then later he relocated back to Geneva soon to become John Calvin's closest friend and co-worker. Calvin put him in charge of the Geneva Academy that was focused on training men for the ministry in 1559. It was a position that Beza held for the rest of his life. He was 40 years old when he was placed into that position. Together with his general duties running the Ministerial Academy, Beza taught systematic theology there in the academy. And under his leadership, the academy became one of the most successful reformed educational institutions of the 16th century. Bazin not only supervised the academy but after Calvin died he became Geneva's chief pastor and chairman of what was called the Venerable Company of Pastors. And what was that? Well that was a group of eight to ten ministers from the city's churches. You may remember when we studied Geneva I believe there were three main large churches in Geneva itself. And then in the environs around it in the countryside around it a number of rural churches. And so, these men came together as kind of a session or a presbytery. The Venerable Company of Pastors is a group of 8 to 10 ministers from the city's churches, 4 professors from the Geneva Academy, and another 10 to 11 rural pastors from the countryside surrounding the city. And they met each Friday morning to discuss the theological and practical business of the churches and to examine candidates for the ministry and things of that nature. And so he chaired that after Calvin died. Much of Baez's energy as a church leader. And this is, if you read his life, it gets very involved, all of his activities in this regard. But he was very much Involved in seeking to promote the well-being of the French French Calvinist and in France the Huguenots we studied some time back about all the wars that happened in France and how the Huguenots that the reformed Protestant French churches suffered during that time and so basil was very involved in and kind of rollercoaster fortunes of the Huguenots, appealing to various political rulers, traveling to this place, to that place, and speaking on their behalf, and so on. And even at one time being chaplain, I believe, for one of the armies in one of the periods where there was conflict that was going on. These wars raged on, off and on, between 1562 and 1598. And do you remember us talking about the St. Bartholomew Day's massacre during that time? In 1572, there were 20,000 Huguenots who were slaughtered, really at the instigation of the Queen Mother, Catherine, and the Crown. And days after that became more direct. we might say in his political philosophy. Perhaps you remember I referenced when studying the Lutherans the Magdeburg Confession. And I think Pastor Nick mentioned it in his same school lesson recently. It set forth this doctrine of the lesser magistrate. Well the French Crown's participation in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre inspired Beza to write something that became very influential entitled, Concerning the Power of the Magistrates. And in it, Beza argues, really for the doctrine of the lesser magistrate, and he argues that if monarchs behave tyrannically, the lesser political authorities under them have a lawful duty to resist them or to restrain them, even if it becomes necessary by the use of force. And Needham comments that this book became the standard reform view, acted on not just by the Huguenots in France, but also by Dutch Calvinists in revolt against King Philip II of Spain, and by the Scottish Covenanters and the English Puritans in revolt against King Charles I. And it could probably be argued it also had some influence. I haven't read enough to make the direct lines of influence, but I would assume it did upon the American Revolution as well. Beza also made a substantial contribution to Reformed worship. In 1562, he published a complete French metrical Psalter. It became very popular. It was the one that was commonly used in many of the churches after that. And another thing, he was a notable scholar in the area of textual criticism. And what is that? It's not that you're criticizing the Bible, but it's It's looking at all of the Greek text and doing the work of trying to work through those texts where there are variances and differences in determining what the actual original text is. This is called textual criticism, that process and that discipline. It's both a science and an art in some ways. And he was very much involved in that. He published his own critical edition of the Greek New Testament in 1565. And he considered Erasmus' text to be inadequate. By the way, let me just say to people who are like King James only people, there's only one text, the Textus Receptus is the right text. There were different texts among them as well. There were variances. It's not like there was this one monolithic text. And Beza himself considered Erasmus' text to have some problems. And his version made use of other Greek manuscripts that were not known to Erasmus when he produced his critical Greek text. And one of them is actually named after Beza, the Codex Bizet. And so there was another area where he made a vital contribution. And perhaps his most important impact was the way he helped to forward and to systematize and to consolidate Reformed theological perspective post Calvin. His theology was most clearly articulated in his work entitled, Confession of the Christian Faith. It was first published in French, 1559, then translated into Latin in 1560. And that was common because Latin was kind of the intellectual university language. And so, men who had had a university education, scholars, From all these different nations who spoke different languages, they all could read Latin. And so, something would be translated into Latin to make it available to a larger audience. And then it was also translated into English in 1563. It was a very popular work at the time. It was what we might say today a bestseller in Europe and was widely read. Well, as Basil grew old, his unusually healthy constitution, he was a very robust, healthy man with a strong constitution for most of his life. He didn't get sick hardly at all. But as he got older, it began to break down. He partially lost his hearing. He couldn't hear very well. And then he began to lose his short-term memory. He can remember things that happened a long time ago, but he couldn't remember things that had just happened, which is something that's common with old age, and I'm already experiencing that to some degree. I hope it's common, because I think I'm experiencing that too. Anyway, so in 1586, he was excused from preaching daily. From then on until 1600, he only preached on Sunday. And I say it that way because, you know, sometimes we think, boy, it's really hard to preach once on Sunday. These guys preached every, he was preaching just about every day of the week. And so he, when he was excused from that, he only preached on Sunday from 1600 on. Backing up in 1589, his wife Claudine died. They had been married for 40 years. and they never had any children, although they did adopt his wife's niece at one point and took care of her and provided for her, for her education and so forth. After his wife's death, he remarried, taking his wife Catherine Del Piano, a widow of Geneva, and in 1598, he retired from active duty in the academy, sold his library, and gave the proceeds to her, and part of it to the poor. He rendered his last public service in the academy and preached his last sermon in 1600 so that he was the only 16th century reformer who actually preached in the 17th century. And he then wearied, worn out from all of his labors for the cause of Christ over so many years. He died on Sunday, October 13th, 1605. That's Theodore Beza, hugely influential theologian. Not only in Europe, but he had a huge influence upon England as well. Through his influence, his writings, his theological perspectives. Now the second key and influential leader of this period I'd like for us to learn about is William Ames. Have you ever heard of William Ames? You'll come across him. Now that you've heard me mention him at Sunday school, you're going to come across his name sometimes if you're reading theology or you're reading the Puritans or something like that. You'll see quotations from Ames, Dr. Ames, things like that. So who was he? Well, William Ames was actually English. He was born in 1576 in Ipswich, the chief city of Salford County, England. He studied theology at Christ College, Cambridge, which was known at that time as a hotbed of Puritanism. These are just the very early days of Puritanism. language Puritan is referring to the fact that these were men who were committed to the further purification of the Church of England from all vestiges of Roman practice and doctrine. And they wanted to see the English Church become a truly Reformed Church in every way. And so they were called Puritans. Well, this Christ College Cambridge was kind of a hotbed of Puritan sentiment. This is where he studied theology. And there he became a close friend. In fact, he was converted there. He was converted while he was there, I think after he had already been ordained to the ministry, under the preaching of William Perkins. The rousing quote, rousing preaching of William Perkins. He was a famous early Puritan theologian and preacher who's worth knowing about. We'll learn more about him later. And they became really good friends. He became a close friend of his and they had a wonderful friendship and relationship. He graduated from there with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1598 and a Master of Arts in 1601 and he was elected fellow at Christ College. Let me just pause and say it's interesting when you read about the history of the Puritans and see there's like a chain of men who were converted under one another's ministries while they were in college. You have Ames was converted under Perkins ministry and there's several men like that who were converted under the ministries of men who were at the time teachers or faculty members in the university and they were converted under their preaching. This is probably the first example we see of that. Now, the English establishment, though, at that time, prevented Ames from pursuing further. After he got his Bachelor of Arts, then his Master of Arts, he was awarded a fellowship. He became a fellow. Do you know what that means? That's someone who's given a stipend to be able to continue their studies. But he really was not able to finish pursuing his academic career because of his strong objections to certain aspects of the Anglican church. So eventually he left England. He believed it had become too hostile to Puritan outlook at that time and he settled in the Dutch Republic in 1610. And the following year, he was made the chaplain to the English-speaking congregation in The Hague, which is the location of the Dutch government where an English-speaking congregation gathered and worshiped. And he served in this role from 1611 to 1619. And he wrote extensively against the Armenians. This is when the Armenian crisis really began to come up through the teaching of Jacob Arminius. And he wrote against it. He was a non-voting member of the International Senate of Dort. that convened to address the Armenian crisis, which we're going to consider in more detail later. It was that synod that produced the Heidelberg Catechism, which we've been going over Sunday evenings, the Canons of Dort, and I think also the Belgian Confession was somewhere around that time. In 1622, Ames became professor of theology at the newly created Franeker University on the Dutch Republic's northern coast land. And it was here that he produced most of his literary works. There are many of them, but the most important of which was his book entitled The Marrow of Theology. Published in 1627. I had it on my desk. I meant to bring it in and show it to you But it's you can buy it now. It's it's available today Don't get that confused with the marrow of modern divinity. You remember the book that was what book of the month? It's not that but this was called the marrow of theology and another important work published in 1632 was entitled concerning conscience its power and cases Now that work on the conscience became really a landmark work on Christian ethics and just kind of moral theology. And that language cases of conscience is something that's going to become popular after Ames among the Puritans in their writings. And it refers to practical questions and moral dilemmas of the Christian life and Christian experience. Maybe you're reading one of the Puritans, Thomas Watson or someone, and he'll pause and he'll give questions that you may be thinking about. Well, what about this? What about that? And they answer these cases of conscience that Christians sometimes struggle in. Well, his work was kind of the landmark work with regard to that kind of approach to helping people with various issues and questions in the Christian life. His work, The Marrow of Theology, was extremely influential on subsequent generations of Reformed preachers and thinkers. It's a work in systematic theology. And it was especially influential among the Puritans, again, which we're going to study in more detail later. It was intended to be a compendium of theology for both laypersons and theological students. In New England, it was generally regarded as the best summary of Calvinistic theology ever written. And it's interesting, its major theme was not merely the intellectual knowledge of theology, but theology in the interest of a Godward life. Indeed, the first statement in the Marrow gives this very terse and simple definition of theology. Here's how Ames to find theology, the doctrine of living to God. And here Ames was following in the footsteps of his mentor William Perkins who defined theology as, quote, the science of living blessedly forever. And both of them show the influence of Petrus Remus, whom I mentioned earlier, who emphasized an approach to analyzing a subject with a concern for its practical use. Indeed, Remus himself defined theology as the doctrine of living well. And so we see the influence of these men, though Ames' definition was not exactly the same. There's this practical aspect. Theology is not just about knowing a lot of facts about God. It's not just about becoming really smart and understanding all the intricate difficult questions about theology and God and so forth. It's more than that. It's about living to God. And this, I think, is one of the most wonderful things about Puritan writings. And theology, which were greatly influenced by both Perkins and Ames, there is careful theology wed together with a practical emphasis and personal application to the life and the conscience and experience. Well, as his reputation increased, as he was serving as professor of theology at Frederick University, he was promoted to rector, 1626, that's kind of like the president, the head of the university. However, Ames was not really happy there. He found the university's intellectualism stifling because he thought it was too often void of experiential piety. He felt the university tended to treat theology as a purely academic discipline with no real impact on the life. For example, there's an anecdote about one of Ames' colleagues, a fellow professor at the university, that he would sometimes drink too much in the evenings and his students, under the pretense of taking him home, would cart him off on out of town to another town and drop him off there in the different towns so that he couldn't get back the next morning in time for them to have to go to his lecture because he would still be trying to get back. And, well, of course, that kind of thing greatly discouraged and disheartened Ames while he was there, and he tried to leave Franeker to immigrate to America. It didn't work out. He was a Congregationalist in his convictions on church government, believing in the independence of each local church. And there was, so were the churches in Massachusetts. There were Congregationalist churches in Massachusetts colony that urged him to come there and to be their pastor. And he hoped that if he could go there, the climate would also help him with his peculiar health problem, which was asthma. He struggled with asthma. But again, for whatever reason, I haven't actually been able to track down what the precise reasons were. I didn't have time to dig deeply into that, but it never happened. He never actually moved to America. In 1632, He became co-pastor of a Congregationalist church in Rotterdam where he died later at the age of 57. Very influential man. You're going to, now you'll probably see, you'll recognize his name. Ah, now I remember that name from Pastor Smith. Maybe you're reading one of these Puritan paperbacks or something and someone quotes the venerable Dr. Ames or they may quote William Perkins and we'll learn more about Perkins later. But Ames had a tremendous influence in the style of the theologizing that you see in the Puritans. Okay? Now, the next guy, you know, there's all these great Dutch theologians that we don't know about. And I've wondered why, because some of them were tremendously influential. And I've decided that the practical reason is because it's so hard to pronounce their names that English folks just have a hard time remembering these guys. because their names don't usually sound like the way the letters are, okay? But this guy was a tremendously influential theologian who is pretty much recognized as the great theologian of his day, okay? His name is Gisbert. And how do you think you say... Whoop! Whoop! How do you think you say that? Foutius. It's pronounced in two different ways. You'll hear it pronounced Foo-tee-us or Foo-shee-us. Foo-tee-us or Foo-shee-us. Now we would never think of that looking at that, would we? But that's how you say his name, Foo-tee-us. Now he was born in 1589 at Huisden near Utrecht, a city in the Netherlands. Needham tells us that, as a child, he displayed a phenomenal memory, learning by heart vast chunks of Greek and Latin poetry. He developed these linguistic skills at Leiden University, where he also taught theology, studied theology, excuse me, during the Armenian Controversy. Phutias was then ordained a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Congregation in Vlijmen, 1611. In 1617, he accepted a call back to the congregation of his youth in Houston, where he was raised. He was also an attendee at the Senate of Dort. He was a delegate there for six months in 1619, and he became internationally famous. None of us have ever heard of him, but in his day, he was internationally, that is in Europe and in the reform world, Britain, all around, he was internationally famous as a lecturer in theology at the University of Utrecht. This was a post he was invited to take up in 1634. He moved into the city and also became pastor of one of the churches. He taught theology and oriental languages there for the next 30 years until his death in 1676. And he was recognized in Europe as one of the foremost reform thinkers of his day, as I said. His most important literary work was entitled Select Theological Disputations. A small work published in five volumes. between 1648 and 1669. And he has been described as a gladiator for correct doctrine. And yet at the same time, a man with a pious heart. He wanted true spirituality as well as true doctrine to flourish. And he was at the center of a movement in the Dutch Reformed Church that's been viewed as kind of the counterpart of Puritanism in England, and it's been called the Second Dutch Reformation. And he was very much at the center of that kind of renewal of spiritual life in the Dutch church at that time. Now there were two controversies that Futius was involved in I think you might find interesting. The first one had to do with this guy, Rene Descartes. He's been called the first modern philosopher. Futius was a strong opponent of him and his thinking. Descartes, a Roman Catholic, he advocated an approach to knowledge that was based on a kind of skepticism. Knowledge must begin with some universal truth. that cannot be doubted, that you then build your reasoning about other things upon that universal truth. Well, that first principle for Descartes is not God or the Bible, it's the knowledge that I exist. And Descartes is the one who said these famous words, I think, therefore I am. And he began his method of reasoning from a radical position of doubting everything. Quoting, but if it is I who am doubting, then at the very least, there must be I who does the doubting. Therefore, I, the doubter, must exist if nothing else exists. And that this is the only secure platform, we might say, from which to begin to build then the palace of my understanding of the world around me. Now, I won't try to give you all the details of Cartesian philosophy, I don't know that I'm capable of doing that, but just to say that Futius was convinced that it was an ultra-skeptical approach to knowledge that would eventually lead to atheism. So he waged an all-out war with Descartes, which he saw as a larger war with atheism. In 1639, he wrote the book, Disputations on Atheism, which was really directed at this kind of philosophy. All right, the second major conflict that Futius was involved in, that I'll mention very, very quickly, had to do with another influential theologian of this period. Now try to guess how you say his name. You probably get the first part, Yohannes. Coxaeus, Coxaeus. Yohannes Coxaeus. And he was born in northwestern Germany, 1603. Studied in Bremen University, then he went to Franeker University in the Dutch Republic, where he studied under the man we learned about earlier, William Ames. He had already been lecturing biblical languages at Bremen, starting in 1630, and after moving to Franeker in 1636, he taught Hebrew and Oriental languages there, and also began studying theology there in 1643. In 1650, he moved to Leiden University as professor of theology, where he remained until his death in 1669. He was an extremely brilliant man. The extent of his learning is like massive and almost unbelievable. Just to give you an example, Needham tells us that as well as the Bible in Hebrew and Greek and Christian theology from a reformed perspective, he had a thorough knowledge of the Jewish Talmud and of the Quran, which he read in the original Arabic. He was known also as a man of warm, earnest, experiential piety. His most famous and controversial work was his book entitled Doctrine of the Covenant and Testament of God. And I've got to go really fast, I've got four minutes left here. Now in that, he presented a particular brand of covenant theology. And sadly, that particular brand of covenant theology divided the Dutch Reformed Church into those who were strongly in favor of, strongly admired it, and those who were fiercely opposed to it. Understanding God's dealings with humanity as being in terms of successive covenants, that was not something new with Coxeus. The basic ideas of covenant theology were really already in place. The idea that history revolved around two covenants, the original covenant of works with Adam and the covenant of grace with Christ. As in the role of the second Adam, through union with Adam and his breaking of the first covenant, humanity fell. Through union with Christ, the new humanity is redeemed. So Coxeus didn't invent that. But his book magnified covenant theology and moved it in directions that were new and sometimes controversial. And the controversial aspects of his understanding were mainly two. One, that Coxeus saw the Sabbath as a distinctively Old Testament ordinance that was not rooted in creation, but only in God's covenant with Israel. And he argued that in the New Testament church, a day of rest and worship was observed, not from obedience to the fourth commandment, but simply because Christians had found it edifying to have such a day. And then secondly, Coxeus made a distinction between the salvation enjoyed by believers under the Old Testament and under the New Testament. Before Christ, atoned for sin by his death, God passed over the sins of Old Testament saints, but did not forgive them. So the justification of the Old Testament saints was inferior to that of New Testament believers. Prior to Christ, justification was by way of promise, whereas now it's by way of fulfillment. It's actually received and fully enjoyed. Now, I got two minutes, so there's a lot there. I mean, there are problems there, mixed with some elements of truth, if it teased out properly. But Coxeus accused his opponents of flattening out theology. without a proper recognition of its historic development in redemptive history over time. And he, and that's true in his view of justification as well, he coaxes, believe that much systematic theology tended to ignore the historical development of the two testaments, which is a real danger in systematic theology. And he was trying to remedy that with what we would call today a more biblical theological approach. Biblical theology is looking at the development of the themes of Scripture as they are unfolded within the history of Scripture itself through the Bible. Rather than the topical approach where you just take everything the Bible says about this topic, you collate it in systematic theology. And so there really needs to be a balance of those two disciplines. in the study of theology. And he was kind of a pioneer in some ways in the area of biblical theology in an early day before it really became what it is today. But... But this opposition against Coxeus was led by Thutis. And it was a war, I mean it was an all out war going on in the Dutch churches for a number of years. And I have to stop now because I've got about a minute left and so try to finish on time. But I wish I could say more, just to say, This war lasted for a good while. Eventually, even after their death, eventually the two groups came together in the 18th century to fight liberalism. And there were some great men during this period who really did not participate in that war. Hermann Wittzius wrote probably the classic work on the covenants, and he took some of the best from Futhius and the best from Coccius in writing his work, which has become something of a classic. And so there's good and bad to learn from that period. So we need to stop, let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time we could spend together studying the history of the church. Help us to grow in our appreciation of those who have labored for the cause of Christ in years gone by. And we pray you'd help us to learn from the good things that they did and also from the mistakes that they made. And we ask this in Christ's name, amen. We hope you were edified by this message. For additional sermons, as well as information on giving to the ministry of Emmanuel Baptist Church, and on our current building project, you can visit us online at ebcfl.org. That's ebcfl.org.