I. Life of Arminius and the Controversy in his tine. —The following sketch, so far as the facts of the life of Arminius is concerned, is modified from the Bio- graphical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
James Arminius (Lat. Jacobus Arminius; Dutch, Jacob Hermanson or Van Herman) was born in the year 1560 at Oudewater, a small town of Holland. As Oudewater means in Dutch "Old Water," Veteres Aquae, Arminius is sometimes surnamed in his works Veteraquinas. He lost his father, a cutler, in his in- fancy ; but he found a protector in Theodorus ^Emil- ius, who had once been a Roman Catholic priest. vEmilius took Arminius with him to Utrecht, and sent him to the school of that place. In his 15th year Arminius lost his patron by death, but another pro- tector, Rudolph Snellius, took him under his care, and removed him to Marburg (1575). Arminius had scarcely arrived at Marburg when he heard that his
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town had been sacked by the Spaniards. Hur- rying back to Oudewater, he found that his mother and his other relatives had been killed. He returned to Marburg on foot. He went thence to Rotterdam, and was received into the house of Peter Bcrtius, pas- tor of the Reformed Church. In the same year (1575) he was sent, with Peter Bertius the younger, to the University of Leyden, which had just been founded. After he had studied at Leyden for six years ," the di- rectors of the body of merchants" of Amsterdam un- dertook to bear the expenses of his education for the ministry, Arminius agreeing that after he had been ordained he would not serve in the church of any oth- er city without the permission of the burgomasters of Amsterdam. In 1582 he was sent to Geneva, which was then the great school of theology for all the Re- formed churches, and where the doctrines of Calvin were taught in their most rigorous shape by Theodore Beza. At Geneva Arminius formed a close friendship which united him through life with Uyttenbogaert of Utrecht. During his residence at Geneva he gave great offence to some of the Aristotelian teachers of the Geneva school by advocating in public and lec- turing in private to his friends on the logic of Ramus as opposed to that of Aristotle. See Ramus. This course created so much commotion that he left Gene- va and went to Basle, where the faculty of divinity offered to confer upon him the degree of doctor gratis; but he declined it, considering himself too young, and in 1583 returned to Geneva, where he continued his theological studies for three years more. In 15.s6 the, fame of Zabarella, professor of philosophy at Padua, induced him to take a journey into Italy. From Pad- ua he proceeded to Rome. After this journey Armin- ius came back to Geneva, and soon received an or- der from the burgomasters of Amsterdam to return to that town. He had taken this journey without their knowledge, and rumors had spread abroad that he had kissed the pope's slipper, held intercourse with the Jesuits, and especially with Cardinal Bellarminc — that, in short, he had become a Roman Catholic. The testimony of a friend who had travelled with him cleared him from these charges. Arminius used af- terward to say that he derived no little benefit from this journey, as c ' he saw at Rome a mystery of ini- quity much more foul than he had ever imagined." He wras ordained at Amsterdam on the 11th of Au- gust, 1588, and he soon became distinguished as a preacher. The mild opinions of Melancthon on pre- destination had spread into Holland even before those of Calvin. In 1589 Theodore Koornhert, of Amster- dam, published several works, in which he attacked the doctrine of predestination, which was taught by Beza and the Genevan school. To obviate Koornhert's objections, some ministers of Delft proposed a change in Beza's doctrine. They agreed with Beza that di- vine predestination was the antecedent, uncondition- al, and immutable decree of God concerning the sal- vation or damnation of each individual ; but whereas Beza represented that man, not considered as fallen, or even as created, was the object of this uncondition- al decree, the ministers of Delft made this peremptory decree subordinate to the creation and fall of man ; that is to say, they adopted guMa.psririani.im in place of the supralapsarianism of Calvin and Beza. They thought this hypothesis would do away with Koorn- hert's objection that the doctrine of absolute decrees represented God as the author of sin — as such decrees made sin necessary and inevitable no less than dam- nation. Their view was published under the title Re- sponsio ad argumenta qvrrdmn Ilczir et Ca/rini, ex trac- tate de Pradestinationc, in Cap. IX ad liamanns. The book was sent to Lydius, professor at Franeker, who requested Arminius to answer it. He consented ; but in studying the subject he began to doubt which of the two views to adopt, and at length became inclined to embrace the doctrine which he had undertaken to re-