s not the saving belief from himself, nor out of his free
will, but he needs thereto God's grace in Christ.

IV. This grace is the beginning, continuation, and completion of man's
salvation; all good deeds must be ascribed to it, but it does not work
irresistibly.

V. God's grace gives sufficient strength to the true believers to
overcome evil; but whether they cannot lose grace should be more closely
examined before it should be taught in full security.

Afterwards they expressed themselves more distinctly on this point, and
declared that a true believer, through his own fault, can fall away from
God and lose faith.

Before the conference, however, the Gomarite preachers had drawn up a
Contra-Remonstrance of Seven Points in opposition to the Remonstrants'
five.

They demanded the holding of a National Synod to settle the difference
between these Five and Seven Points, or the sending of them to foreign
universities for arbitration, a mutual promise being given by the
contending parties to abide by the decision.

Thus much it has been necessary to state concerning what in the
seventeenth century was called the platform of the two great parties: a
term which has been perpetuated in our own country, and is familiar to
all the world in the nineteenth.

These were the Seven Points:

I. God has chosen from eternity certain persons out of the human race,
which in and with Adam fell into sin and has no more power to believe and
Convert itself than a dead man to restore himself to life, in order to
make them blessed through Christ; while He passes by the rest through His
righteous judgment, and leaves them lying in their sins.

II. Children of believing parents, as well as full-grown believers, are
to be considered as elect so long as they with action do not prove the
contrary.

III. God in His election has not looked at the belief and the repentance
of the elect; but, on the contrary, in His eternal and unchangeable
design, has resolved to give to the elect faith and stedfastness, and
thus to make them blessed.

IV. He, to this end, in the first place, presented to them His only
begotten Son, whose sufferings, although sufficient for the expiation of
all men's sins, nevertheless, according to God's decree, serves alone to
the reconciliation of the elect.

V. God causest he Gospel to be preached to them, making the same through
the Holy Ghost, of strength upon their minds; so that they not merely
obtain power to