Prof. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary.

Introduction

While our main interest in these articles is that great preacher and Reformed liturgist, Peter Datheen, it is crucial, if we are to understand his life, to have before our minds a brief sketch of the history of the Reformation in the Lowlands, in which country Datheen lived and worked.

We called attention to the fact that the Reformed Church in the Netherlands was born out of the womb of persecution, some of the most terrible persecution the church has ever experienced in the entire new dispensation, and will not experience again until the days of Antichrist. Because the faith of the church was hardened and purified in the crucible of persecution, that heritage of the faith handed down to us in our creeds, our liturgy, and our church government is all the stronger and ought to be all the more precious to us. How can we express our gratitude to God for this heritage in any better way than to remain faithful to it?

Survial of the Reformed Church

It is difficult to imagine life during such horrible times of persecution as the church endured in the Lowlands. But the fact is that, as has been true throughout ‘the ages, God used persecution to advance His cause. “The blood of the martyrs,” Tertullian had said more than a millennium earlier, “is the seed of the church.”

So powerfully did the Reformed faith spread throughout all the Lowlands that the people were on the very verge of overt rebellion. So serious was the situation that even Philip II had to take notice; and persecution eased somewhat.

One factor in the sturdy faithfulness of the people was the growing practice of field preaching. “Field preachers,” with their pulpits strapped to their backs, wandered the land and preached to the people in every place possible — in empty buildings, open fields, market places, deep forests. Most of the time the services were held in secret, with guards posted at crucial junctures to give warning in the event Spanish troops were spotted. Sometimes meetings were discovered and cruelly broken up. On occasion they were held in peace. A description of one such meeting will help us to appreciate them.

Citizens and strangers now poured out in one vast stream, and took the road to Overeen (the place where services were to be held, HH). Last of all arrived Peter Gabriel the minister. Two stakes were driven perpendicularly into the ground, and a bar was laid across, on which the minister might place his Bible, and rest his arms in speaking. Around this rude pulpit were gathered first the women, then the men, next those who had arms, forming an outer ring of defence, which however was scarcely needed, for there was then no force in Holland that would have dared to attack this multitude. The worship was commenced with the singing of a psalm. First were heard the clear soft notes of the females at the centre; next the men struck in with their deeper voices; last of all the martial forms-in the outer circle joined the symphony, and gave completeness and strength to the music. When the psalm was ended, prayer was offered, and the thrilling peals that a moment before had filled the vault overhead were now exchanged for a silence yet more thrilling. The minister, opening the Bible, next readout as his text the 8th, 9th, and 10th verses of the second chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should wallk in them.” Here in a few verses, said the minister, was the essence of the whole Bible – the “marrow” of all true theology: – “the gift of God,” salvation; its source, “the grace of God;” the way in which it is received, “through faith;” and the fruits ordained to follow, “good works.” 

It was a hot midsummer day; the audience was not fewer than 5,000; the preacher was weak and infirm in body, but his spirit was strong, and the lightning-power of his words held his audience captive. The sermon, which was commenced soon after noon, did not terminate till past four o’clock. Then again came prayer. The preacher made supplication “for all degrees of men, especially for the Government, in such a manner that there was hardly a dry eye to be seen.” The worship was closed as it had been commenced, with the melodious thunder of 5,000 voices raised in praise.

The slight surcease of persecution did not last long. Philip’s lying promises betrayed the people, for, while promising delegates from the Lowlands some surcease from persecution, he secretly plotted to increase its intensity; and the iconoclastic riots brought persecution with renewed force. The riots which took place almost throughout the Lowlands as the Reformed people, goaded by persecution, took their frustration out on every evidence of Roman Catholicism which they could find churches, stained-glass windows, images, altars, decorations. Smashing wrecking, destroying, they laid the interiors of many churches in ruins.

Philip had his excuse. The cruel Duke of Alva was appointed to carry out Philip’s vengeance. Alva asked for troops. The pope sent 10,000 troops from Italy with instructions to destroy Geneva on the way as a “nest of devils and apostates.” Alva did not obey, but marched in speed towards the Lowlands and began to carry out Philip’s determination to root Protestantism from the land.

The executioners were busy from dawn till dark. Within three months 1800 men were hanged. That is 600 a month, 20 a day. They were slaughtered for every conceivable reason, one for saying: “We must obey God rather than man.” On February 16, 1568 a decree was issued which declared all the inhabitants, with only a few listed exceptions, condemned to death as heretics. Trials were then no longer necessary. The burning, hanging, torturing went on unabated – until Alva himself, sated with blood, frustrated in every effort to wipe out heresy, crept back to Spain, a defeated man.

Freedom At Last

Gradually the opposition became more organized. It really began with the “Beggars of the Sea,” a rough group of sea captains with their crews and boats, who used their maritime skills and reckless courage to raid Spanish shipping and harass Spanish land forces. Every Reformed school boy who has any love for his heritage should read the exploits of these men.

Briel fell to the “Beggars,” and it was with their help that the dreadful siege of Leyden was lifted. The inhabitants of this walled city, surrounded by Spanish troops, were in total despair. The food was gone, thousands had already died of starvation, hardly anyone was left with sufficient strength to resist any concentrated attack on the walls. But the people were determined to resist until every man, woman, and child within the city was dead.

The Sea Beggars were the men who broke the dikes, and prayed for a change in weather. God sent fierce and raging storms from the northwest and southwest which drove the ocean waters over the land until the ships were able to sail to the very walls of Leyden. The Spanish forces were defeated and routed; the gates of Leyden were opened, and the city rescued. For its courage and steadfastness, the city was later rewarded with a university, which school gained international renown and became a bulwark of the Reformed faith.

Armed insurrection now also began to take place under the leadership of William of Orange. Religious and political freedom were so inseparably connected that to strive for the former was to commit oneself to fight for the latter. It was the beginning of the Eighty Years’ War. It was undeniably an effort to promote the cause of the truth with the sword, something forbidden by Scripture. It resulted in freedom for the Lowlands, but also the establishment of a State Church something which proved to be the Achilles’ heel of the church in years to come. Yet, as wrong as the use of the sword may seem to us, we must at least have the sympathy to understand that our fellow saints were driven to distraction as their families were tortured and burned, their homes confiscated, the brethren murdered, their friends, male and female, subjected to the cruelest tortures devised by the sadistic and cunning mind of men -men of the church!

Freedom came gradually. Not many major battles were fought; and the ones which were fought usually ended in the defeat of the Protestants. Not much of the time was spent in actual military maneuvers and attempts to defeat opposing forces. The chief problem was that William was unable to hold together an army of sufficient strength to have any hope of defeating Spanish forces.

Although the Eighty Years’ War did not officially end until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a combination of forces gradually brought peace. Spain gradually lost heart when all her efforts to destroy the Reformed faith proved futile. And this loss of heart was hastened by the gradual weakening of Spain as a military power in Europe. Her navy was gradually destroyed by the might of Holland and Britain. Her mighty armada was wrecked by fierce storms off the coasts of Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. Her armies were no longer feared throughout Europe.

In addition to these factors was also the growing movement of toleration in Europe. Religious wars had destroyed Germany as well as the Lowlands, and men began to see that if they did not learn to tolerate opposing viewpoints, they would follow a path which could lead only to continental suicide.

And, finally, the Lowlands settled the problems by some sort of division. Gradually Roman Catholics drifted into the south, where Spain was strongest; and Protestants drifted north, where the Reformed faith was strongest. Two countries emerged: Belgium, which to this day remains strongly Roman Catholic; and the Netherlands, the cradle of the Reformed faith.

But hardly had the Reformed faith been established in peace in the Netherlands, than the country was once again in danger of being tom to pieces by the Arminian controversy.

But that is another story, for another time.

It was into the turmoil of the struggle of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands that Peter Datheen entered. The role he played in the founding of the Dutch Reformed Churches is the subject of our next article.