§ 161.4. =The Cocceian and Cartesian Controversies.=--If not the founder, certainly the most distinguished representative in the Netherlands of that scholasticism which sought to expound and defend orthodoxy, was =Voetius=, who died A.D. 1676, from A.D. 1607 pastor in various places, and from A.D. 1634 professor at Utrecht. A completely different course was pursued by =Cocceius= of Bremen, who died A.D. 1669, professor at Franeker in A.D. 1636, and at Leyden in A.D. 1650. The famous Zürich theologian, Bullinger (§ 138, 7), had in his “_Compend. Rel. Chr._” of A.D. 1556, viewed the whole doctrine of saving truth from the point of view of a covenant of grace between God and man; and this idea was afterwards carried out by Olevianus of Heidelberg (§ 144, 1) in his “_De Substantia Fœderis_,” of A.D. 1585. This became the favourite method of distribution of doctrine in the whole German Reformed church. In the Dutch church it was regarded as quite unobjectionable. In England it was adopted in the Westminster Confession of A.D. 1648 (§ 155, 1), and in Switzerland in A.D. 1675, in the _Formula Consensus_. Cocceius is therefore not the founder of the federal theology. He simply gave it a new and independent development, and freed it from the trammels of scholastic dogmatics. He distinguished a twofold covenant of God with man: the _fœdus operum s. naturæ_ before, and the _fœdus gratiæ_ after the fall. He then subdivided the covenant of grace into three economies: before the law until Moses; under the law until Christ; and after the law in the Christian church. The history of the kingdom of God in the Christian era was arranged in seven periods, corresponding to the seven apocalyptic epistles, trumpets, and seals. In his treatment of his theme, he repudiated philosophy, scholasticism, and tradition, and held simply by Scripture. He is thus the founder of a purely biblical theology. He attached himself as closely as possible to the prevailing predestinationist orthodoxy, but only externally. In his view the sacred history in its various epochs adjusted itself to the needs of human personality, and to the growing capacity for appropriating it. Hence it was not the idea of election, but that of grace, that prevailed in his system. Christ is the centre of all history, spiritual, ecclesiastical, and civil; and so everything in Scripture, history, doctrine, and prophecy, necessarily and immediately stands related to him. The O.T. prophecies and types point to the Christ that was to come in the flesh, and all history after Christ points to his second coming; and O. and N.T. give an outline of ecclesiastical and civil history down to the end of time. Thus typology formed the basis of the Cocceian theology. In exegesis, however, Cocceius avoided all arbitrary allegorizing. It was with him an axiom in hermeneutics, _Id significan verba, quod significare possunt in integra oratione, sic ut omnino inter se conveniant_. Yet his typology led him, and still more many of his adherents, into fantastic exegetical errors in the prophetic treatment of the seven apocalyptic periods.