DE ONRUST OVER DE EERSTE DOOPVRAAG ROND 1728

From 1566 onwards, the Reformed Church in the Netherlands used a form of infant baptism at the end of which the parents were obliged to answer three specific questions. The first of those three questions reads as follows: 'Forasmuch as our children, having been conceived and born in sin, are therefore consigned to every kind of misery—even to reprobation itself—do you affirm that they are sanctified in Christ Jesus, and that it behooves us to have them baptized as members of His congregation'. In the early 18th century, however, four ministers in the City of Utrecht (Abraham Josua Brakonier; Aegidius van de Putt; Johan Reiner Kelderman; and Johannes Vos) raised objections to this question. They no longer thought that it was right to require parents to affirm that their offspring were sanctified in Christ if they themselves were either ignorant of the principles of the Christian Faith or lived a sinful life. For this reason, they modified the first question in the baptismal formula on their own authority in such a way that it no longer gave rise to such offence. The scruples of those four preachers were obviously provoked by their concern that this question, to which assent from the parents was formally required, was not understood to denote children in general but, in particular, those infants who were presented for baptism at that very moment. In 1727 the Synod in Utrecht instructed its delegates to establish contact with the dissidents and persuade them to withdraw their objections. This procedure failed to resolve the dispute, however, and the four ministers published a formal statement of protest in which they proceeded to defend their own position in this matter. Gerardus van Schuylenburg, the minister in Tienhoven who had already encountered the same difficulty some ten years before, added his voice to their protest. In September 1728 the Provincial States of Utrecht proscribed all further discussion of this issue either in the pulpit, during public meetings, or in polemical pamphlets whilst the Synod in Utrecht determined this question, because of the tensions which this particular controversy unleashed. In September 1729 the Provincial States of Utrecht took further action by formally forbidding any further discussion of this particularly contentious matter even during the meeting of the Synod. The official delegates just managed to deposit their formal response with the Synod in time. This response also appeared in print. Outside the Province of U