His most renowned collection of poems, the Over-ysselsche Sangen en Dichten (1630), forms a high point of Dutch baroque.

In 1618 he was appointed librarian of the Fraterhuis, and in the same year the Synod of Dort assigned him a part in the new revision of the Dutch translation of the Old Testament; the Statenvertaling.

While endeavoring to avoid the contemporary controversy whether men might wear long hair, he was obliged to defend his moderate position.

[5] Against the Remonstrants he wrote Schriftuurlijk tegen Bericht van de Leere der Gereformeerde Kerken aengaende de goddelijke Predestinatie ende andere aen-clevende Poineten (Deventer, 1617); against Anglican and royal absolutist Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, itself a disputation against the political doctrines of Suarez and Bellarmine, Revius wrote his Suarez Repurgatus (Leyden 1648); against the Cartesians he wrote especially his Statera philosophise Cartesiante (Leyden, 1650) and Theke, hoc eat levitas defensionia Cartesian (Letter, 1653).

His most famous poem is Hy droegh onse smerten (He carried our sorrows) with its first line "T' en sijn de Joden niet, Heer Jesu, die u cruysten" (It's not the Jews, Lord Jesus, who crucified you).

Het Liedboek voor de Kerken, the most commonly used hymn book in the Netherlands, features seven of his poems in modernized spelling.