ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF ARMINIANISM TILL 1618.
The Arminian controversy arose in Holland towards the close of the heroic conflict with foreign political and ecclesiastical despotism. This very contest of forty-five years' duration, so full of trials and afflictions, stimulated the intellectual and moral energies of an honest, earnest, freedom-loving, and tenacious people, and made the Protestant part of the Netherlands the first country in Christendom for industry, commerce, education, and culture. The Universities of Leyden, founded in 1575, as the city's reward for its heroic resistance to Spain, Franecker (1585), Groningen (1612), Utrecht (1636), and Harderwyk (1648) soon excelled older schools of learning. The general prosperity of the United Provinces excited the admiration of the foreign delegates to the Synod of Dort, where they found clean and stately mansions, generous hospitality, and every comfort and luxury which commerce could bring from all parts of the earth. This was the soil on which the Calvinistic system was brought to its severest test. The controversy was purely theological in its nature, but owing to the intimate connection of Church and State it became inevitably entangled in political issues, and shook the whole country. The Reformed Churches in France, Switzerland, Germany, England, and Scotland took a deep interest in it, and sided, upon the whole, with the Calvinistic party; while the Lutheran Church sympathized to some extent with the Arminian.
The founder of Arminianism, from whom it derives its name, is James Arminius (1560-1609). [977] He studied under Beza at Geneva, was elected minister at Amsterdam (1588), and then professor of theology at Leyden (1603), as successor of Francis Junius, who had taken part in the revision of the Belgic Confession. He was at first a strict Calvinist, but while engaged in investigating and defending the Calvinistic doctrines against the writings of Dirik Volckaerts zoon Koornheert, [978] at the request of the magistrate of Amsterdam, he found the arguments of the opponent stronger than his own convictions, and became a convert to the doctrine of universal grace and of the freedom of will. He saw in the seventh chapter of Romans the description of a legalistic conflict of the awakened but unregenerate man, while Augustine and the Reformers referred it to the regenerate. He denied the decree of reprobation, and moderated the doctrine of original sin. He advocated a revision of the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism. He came into open conflict with his supralapsarian colleague, Francis Gomar (1563-1645), who had conferred on him the degree of doctor of divinity, but now became his chief antagonist. Hence the strict Calvinists were called 'Gomarists.' The controversy soon spread over all Holland. Arminius applied to the Government to convoke a synod (appealing, like the Donatists, to the very power which afterwards condemned him), but died of a painful disorder before it convened. [979] He was a learned and able divine; and during the controversy which embittered his life he showed a meek, Christian spirit. 'Condemned by others,' said Grotius, 'he condemned none.' His views on anthropology and soteriology approached those of the Melanchthonian school in the Lutheran Church, but the tendency of his theology was towards a latitudinarian liberalism, which developed itself in his followers. [980]
After his death the learned Simon Episcopius (Bisschop, 1583-1644), his successor in the chair of theology at Leyden, afterwards professor in the Arminian College at Amsterdam, [981] and the eloquent Janus Uytenbogaert (1557-1644), preacher at the Hague, and for some time chaplain of Prince Maurice, became the theological leaders of the Arminian party. The great statesman, John van Olden Barneveldt (1549-1619), Advocate-General of Holland and Friesland, and Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the most comprehensive scholar of his age, equally distinguished as statesman, jurist, theologian, and exegete, sympathized with the Arminians, gave them the weight of their powerful influence, and advocated peace and toleration; but they favored a republican confederacy of States rather than a federal State tending to monarchy, against the ambitious designs of Maurice, the Stadtholder and military leader of the Republic, who wished to consolidate his power, and by concluding a truce with Spain (1609) they incurred the suspicion of disloyalty. [982] The Calvinists were the national and popular party, and embraced the great majority of the clergy. They stood on the solid basis of the recognized standards of doctrine. At the same time they advocated the independent action of the Church against the latitudinarian Erastianism of their opponents.
The Arminians formularized their creed in Five Articles (drawn up by Uytenbogaert), and laid them before the representatives of Holland and West Friesland in 1610 under the name of Remonstrance, signed by forty-six ministers. The Calvinists issued a Counter-Remonstrance. Hence the party names Remonstrants (Protestants against Calvinism), and Counter-Remonstrants (Calvinists, or Gomarists). A Conference was held between the two parties at the Hague (Collatio Hagiensis) in 1611, but without leading to an agreement. A discussion at Delft, 1613, and the edict of the States of Holland in favor of peace, 1614, prepared by Grotius, had no better result.