Meantime the Synod had met at Dordtrecht.  The great John Bogerman, with fierce, handsome face, beak and eye of a bird of prey, and a deluge of curly brown beard reaching to his waist, took his seat as president.  Short work was made with the Armenians.  They and their five Points were soon thrust out into outer darkness.

It was established beyond all gainsaying that two forms of Divine worship in one country were forbidden by God’s Word, and that thenceforth by Netherland law there could be but one religion, namely, the Reformed or Calvinistic creed.

It was settled that one portion of the Netherlanders and of the rest of the human race had been expressly created by the Deity to be for ever damned, and another portion to be eternally blessed.  But this history has little to do with that infallible council save in the political effect of its decrees on the fate of Barneveld.  It was said that the canons of Dordtrecht were likely to shoot off the head of the Advocate.  Their sessions and the trial of the Advocate were simultaneous, but not technically related to each other.

The conclusions of both courts were preordained, for the issue of the great duel between Priesthood and State had been decided when the military chieftain threw his sword into the scale of the Church.

There had been purposely a delay, before coming to a decision as to the fate of the state prisoners, until the work of the Synod should have approached completion.

It was thought good that the condemnation of the opinions of the Arminians and the chastisement of their leaders should go hand-in-hand.

On the 23rd April 1619, the canons were signed by all the members of the Synod.  Arminians were pronounced heretics, schismatics, teachers of false doctrines.  They were declared incapable of filling any clerical or academical post.  No man thenceforth was to teach children, lecture to adolescents, or preach to the mature, unless a subscriber to the doctrines of the unchanged, unchangeable, orthodox church.  On the 30th April and 1st May the Netherland Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible.  No change was to be possible in either formulary.

Schools and pulpits were inexorably bound to the only true religion.

On the 6th May there was a great festival at Dordtrecht in honour of the conclusion of the Synod.  The canons, the sentence, and long prayers and orations in Latin by President Bogerman gladdened the souls of an immense multitude, which were further enlivened by the decree that both Creed and Catechism had stood the test of several criticisms and come out unchanged by a single hair.  Nor did the orator of the occasion forget to render thanks “to the most magnanimous King James of Great Britain, through whose godly zeal, fiery sympathy, and truly royal labour God had so often refreshed the weary Synod in the midst of their toil.”

The Synod held one hundred and eighty sessions between the 13th November 1618 and 29th May 1619, all the doings of which have been recorded in chronicles innumerable.  There need be no further mention of them here.