The synod that opened at Dordrecht in November 1618 was called to settle a dispute inside the Dutch Reformed church between the followers of Jacobus Arminius and those of Franciscus Gomarus. In 1610 the Arminian party had presented a Remonstrance in five articles, holding that election is conditional on foreseen faith, that Christ died for all, that grace is necessary but resistible, and questioning whether a believer can finally fall away.
The synod answered article by article, and its Canons are built as replies rather than as a system: unconditional election, a redemption definite in its effect, the total inability of fallen humanity, grace that accomplishes what it intends, and the preservation of the saints. The English mnemonic TULIP is a much later invention and does not follow the order the synod used. Delegations came from England, Scotland, the Palatinate, Hesse, Switzerland, Bremen, Emden and Geneva, which is why it is treated as an international Reformed assembly rather than a Dutch one.
The Remonstrant ministers were deposed and many exiled, and the statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, who had protected them, was executed in May 1619 while the synod was still sitting. The same synod commissioned the Statenvertaling, the state Bible translation completed in 1637, which did for written Dutch something close to what the King James Version did for English.