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the Walloon and Dutch reformation as Guido de Bres, Caspar
vander Heyden, Herman Moded, and Peter Datheen. He spent a
year in Antwerp, endeavoring to consolidate the reformation in that
city about the time of the well-know iconoclastic riots in the Low
Countries. He also participated in consultations with the
disaffected nobility, who sided with the persecuted population and
sought concessions, then independence, from the Spanish
monarchy. When the religious tide turned against Protestants,
Taffin fled again. In exile, he continued to work for the building of
the Reformed church by providing leadership, often as secretary or
clerk, at the early, formative synods of the Dutch Reformed
Church.
In 1573 Taffin accepted the position of chaplain in the court
of Prince William (the Silent) of Orange. As one of two or three
such chaplains, Taffin advised William on matters related to the
emerging Dutch Reformed Church, its relation to the civil
authorities, and its polity and theology. In this capacity he also
acted as William‘s emissary to ecclesiastical assemblies. Taffin‘s
position was strategic and formative. His decade of service in this
role coincided with the seven northern provinces, or what today is
know as The Netherlands, emerging as a separate, Protestant nation
known as The Dutch Republic, and with the formation of the Dutch
Reformed Church. These were also years of hardship and
uncertainty, as the Spanish armies and the southern (Belgian)
nobility restored a post-Tridentine Catholicism in that part of the
Low Countries where Taffin had been raised and where he had
labored. As a Reformed leader he both experienced and witnessed
persecution of the cruelest kind. In that context he brought the
gospel and provided pastoral service. These experiences shaped
his understanding and application of the Bible‘s teaching on faith
and obedience.
From 1583 until his death in 1602, Taffin served as the pastor
to Walloon or French-speaking congregations in Antwerp and
Haarlem, and finally in Amsterdam. It was after the disheartening
return of the southern provinces to the Roman Catholic Church,