§ 161.5. A controversy, occasioned by Cocceius’ statement, in his commentary on Hebrews in A.D. 1658, that the Sabbath, as enjoined by the O.T. ceremonial law, was no longer binding, was stopped in A.D. 1659 by a State prohibition. Voetius had not taken part in it. But when Cocceius, in A.D. 1665, taught from Romans iii. 25, that believers under the law had not full “ἄφεσις,” only a “πάρεσις,” he felt obliged to enter the lists against this “Socinian” heresy. The controversy soon spread to other doctrines of Cocceius and his followers, and soon the whole populace seemed divided into Voetians and Cocceians (§ 162, 5). The one hurled offensive epithets at the other. The Orange political party sought and obtained the favour of the Voetians, as before they had that of the Gomarists; while the liberal republican party coalesced with the Cocceians. Philosophical questions next came to be mixed up in the discussion. The philosophy of the French Catholic =Descartes= (§ 164, 1), settled in A.D. 1629 in Amsterdam, had gained ground in the Netherlands. It had indeed no connexion with Christianity or church, and its theological friends wished only to have it recognised as a formal branch of study. But its fundamental principle, that all true knowledge starts from doubt, appeared to the representatives of orthodoxy as threatening the church with serious danger. Even in A.D. 1643 Voetius opposed it, and mainly in consequence of his polemic, the States General, in A.D. 1656, forbad it being taught in the universities. Their common opposition to scholasticism, however, brought Cocceians and Cartesians more closely to one another. Theology now became influenced by Cartesianism. Roëll, professor at Franeker and Utrecht, who died A.D. 1718, taught that the divinity of the Scriptures must be proved to the reason, since the _testimonium Spir. s. internum_ is limited to those who already believe, rejected the doctrine of the imputation of original sin, the doctrine that death is for believers the punishment of sin, and the application of the idea of eternal “generation” to the Logos, to whom the predicate of sonship belongs only in regard to the decree of redemption and incarnation. Another zealous Cartesian, Balth. Bekker, not only repudiated the superstitions of the age about witchcraft (§ 117, 4), but also denied the existence of the devil and demons. The Cocceians were in no way responsible for such extravagances, but their opponents sought to make them chargeable for these. The stadtholder, William III., at last issued an order, in A.D. 1694, which checked for a time the violence of the strife.