Keywords

• John Robinson
• minister of the English Separatist Church in Leiden and pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers
• was renowned in his times as an accomplished reformed theologian. He engaged in public debate the famous arminian Episcopius
• professor of theology in the University of Leiden
• and wrote one of the most widely-circulated defence of the Synod of Dort. Nevertheless
• his strong separatist stance distanced him gradually from synodal and presbyterian calvinism
• in his last years he advanced concepts of religious life and ideas of Church government close to the anti-confessionalist tendencies of the spiritualists