Samuel Des Marets (1599-1673), born in France and practicing the reformed pastoral ministry in the kingdom during his early years, sees his career taking an early turn, causing him problems of confessional and political identities. It’s obvious in the controversy, but also in his use of ecclesiastical discipline. Minister and professor of theology in the independent principality of Sedan in the mid-1620s, he passes under the protection of its regent, Elizabeth of Nassau, and her son, the prince Frederic-Maurice, Duke of Bouillon, himself in the entourage of his uncle, the Stadtholder Frederick Henry. Established by the States General and on the recommendation of André Rivet in Maastricht, after the taking of the city by the Dutch Republic (1632), he exercises his ministry under conditions which are in certain aspects close to those of France at the same time (controversy, coexistence between legal confessional communities), but marked by original elements (co-sovereignty of the prince-bishop of Liège, Spanish threat, difficulties of integration of his church into the Synod). All this places him in a situation of in-between, which he skilfully knows how to play, alternately using the advantages of his status of French and those of protégé of the States General. He does so for personal reasons, but also to propose the model of a combative pastor, and to consolidate a Church he has established and which he wants to protect from Catholic attacks. Samuel Des Marets maintains both his French culture and the political service of the Dutch Republic, until he leaves Maastricht for’s-Hertogenbosch (1636). He develops an ambiguous position that reveals many aspects of the pastoral ministry in a newly established church on a confessional front during the Thirty Years’ War.