The early reactions to Spinoza’s philosophy among the Dutch Reformers were first focused on the Theological-Political Treatise, which appeared in 1670, then on the Ethics, published in 1677 in the Opera posthuma. Yet this philosophy had hardly remained unknown until this time, for two main reasons. First, Spinoza’s interest in the “new philosophy” had put him in touch with Cartesian circles. Second, his friends and disciples had often asked him to expound his ideas, or to clarify some points of his philosophy. However, when the Theological-Political Treatise appeared there was a general outcry, as if no one among his friends and close disciples could have imagined the theological consequences of Spinoza’s radical philosophical system. And this is what the correspondence between Spinoza and Oldenburg, as well as that between Spinoza and Lambert van Velthuysen, makes clear: the close connection between his philosophy and biblical criticism. Paradoxically, Spinoza’s first and foremost supporters were to be found among members of the same social and intellectual environment—Jarig Jelles and Pieter Balling being the most remarkable among them in their efforts to reconcile Spinozism and religion, as testified by the Dutch Preface which Jelles wrote for the Nagelaten Schriften of 1677.