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