Antonius Driessen
Antonius Driessen [1]
was born in the year 1684 at Sittard, was successively settled as pastor at Maestricht and Utrecht, and was in 1717 inaugurated as professor of theology in the University of Groningen. This position he held till released by death, November 11, 1748. He was a man of sincere piety and eminent learning, and was ardently attached to the doctrines of the Reformed Church. He was, withal, a man of melancholic temperament, and of an intolerant spirit. His zeal for truth, or what he regarded as such, involved him in many unpleasant controversies, and that, too, with some of the most eminent divines of his day — with Wittichius, his colleague, and, as a consequence of that, with Taco van den Honert, professor at Leyden, both of whom he accused of Spinozism; with Lampe, and professor Ode, of Utrecht, whom he accused of Roellism, or heterodox views respecting the eternal generation of the Son, and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, the charge being founded upon Lampe's interpretation of John 5:26; John 15:26; with the celebrated Venema, whom he charged with Arminianism; and with the learned Schultens, because he endeavored to elucidate the Hebrew by the aid of the kindred dialects, especially by that of the Arabic. These controversies were all carried on in Latin, and were on both sides characterized by the acrimony common to theological disputes in those days. His writings are very voluminous, chiefly of a polemic character, and mostly in Latin. His treatise on Evangelical Morality, or the Christian Virtues, is written in Dutch.
