daring to make its
appearance, observed in general the strictest secrecy. Cartesianism made
it bolder for a time, and in party struggles it ventured to take sides.
But the keen eye which the church ever turned toward heresy made it
timid. Yet it was a power which was only waiting for a strong ally in
order to make open war upon the institutions which the heroes of Holland
had wrested from Philip II. of Spain.

Balthazer Bekker, "a man who feared neither man nor devil," was the
first Rationalist in the Dutch church. He was a disciple of Des Cartes,
and an ardent lover of natural science, particularly of astronomy. He
published a work on Comets, in which he combated the old notions,
prevalent among his countrymen, that a comet was always the precursor of
heresies and all manner of evils, and that it should be made the
occasion for a general call to prayer and fasting. Bayle, of Rotterdam,
a reputed atheist, harmonized with Bekker. Bekker separated between the
sphere of reason and that of religion. Whenever they meet each other it
should be as friends and co-workers. Religion has greater dignity, but
that gives it no right to disregard the authority of reason. When the
Scriptures speak in an unnatural way of natural things, it is high time
for the operation of reason. This idea led to the accommodation-theory,
which, applied to the doctrine of spirits in his book, _The World
Bewitched_ (1691), resulted in Bekker's excommunication. His
Cartesianism, which had taught him to distinguish so rigidly between the
two "substances," matter and spirit, as to deny all action of the one
upon the other, led him to assert that spirits, whether good or bad,
have no influence upon the bodies of men. The Jews ascribed all exertion
of power to angels, through whom God worked mediately. Jesus adapted
himself to these ideas of his times.

Bekker loved to trace all spirit-stories to some plausible origin, and
then to hold them up to the ridicule of the masses. To give substantial
proof of his disbelief in all spiritual influence, he passed many
nights in graveyards, on which occasions he manifested a sacrilegious
hardihood, which, besides making him the wonder of his time, could only
be accounted for by supposing that he kept up secret correspondence with
the devil. "For," reasoned the Dutch theologians, "is not all this one
of Satan's tricks to make us believe that he does not exist, so that he
may capture us unawares?" On account of Bekker