Johannes Maccovius

In later years, the fame of Maccovius attracted many students to Franeker, where he spent the rest of his life.

Theologically, Maccovius was a Calvinist, of the supralapsarian school, and possessed theses of a corresponding nature, defended in 1616 by one of his pupils, involved him in a controversy with his colleague Sibrandus Lubbertus which was settled only by the Synod of Dort in 1619.

The synod, while neither approving or condemning his supralapsarianism, acquitted Maccovius of the charges of heresy brought against him, but advised him to be more cautious and peaceable.

Nevertheless, he became involved in another controversy at Dort with his subsequent colleague William Ames by asserting that all things that must be believed are not necessarily true, that no impulse toward regeneration and effecting it exists in the unregenerate, and that Christ is the object of faith because of whom, but not in whom, man must believe.

Maccovius' theory of Scripture was very free,[clarification needed] and he distinguished sharply between scholarship and beliefs essential to salvation.