THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Freiburg, 1885; V. Mahrenholtz, Voltaire’s Leben und Werke, part 2, Oppeln, 1885; E, Champion, Voltaire, Paris, 1893; F. Espinasse, Life of Voltaire, London, 1892; E. Faguet, Voltaire, Paris, 1895; S. G. Tallentyre, Life of Voltaire, 2 vols., London, 1903, new ed., New York, 1910; J. C. Collins, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England, London, 1909.
On his philosophy, etc., consult: E. Bersot, La Philosophie de Voltaire, Paris, 1848; L. L. Bungener, Voltaire et son temps, 2 vols., Paris, 1850, 2d ed., 1851, Eng. transl., Edinburgh, 1854; J. B. Meyer, Voltaire und Rousseau, in threr socialen Bedeutung, Berlin, 1856; A. Anot, Htudes sur Voltaire, Paris, 1864; J. Barni, Histoire des idées morales, pp. 211-349, Paris, 1865; D. F. Strauss, Voltaire: sechs Vortrdge, 5th ed., Bonn, 1878, Fr. transl., Paris, 1876; H. Martin, Voltaire et Rousseau et la philosophie du dix-huitiéme siécle, Paris, 1878; Moussinot, Voltaire et U Eglise, Neuchdtel, 1878; J. Stephen, Hore sabbatice, 2d series, pp. 211-279, London, 1892; R. Urbach, Voltaire’s Verhiliniss zu Newton und Locke, Halle, 1900; P. Sakmann, Voltaire’s Geistesart und Gedankenwelt, Stuttgart, 1909.
VOLUNTARY MISSIONARY SOCIETY IN AMERICA. See MisceLLANEOUS RELIGIOUS Boptiss, 21.
VOLUNTARYISM: The conviction or the system which holds that churches should be supported, not by the State or other secular authority, but by the voluntary contributions of church attendants themselves. This system practically involves entire separation of Church and State, since the State, ceasing to grant endowments to the Church, to pay salaries to the clergy, and to subvention any project for distinctly religious purposes, thereby forfeits whatever claim it might allege to control or influence the Church, as by patronage, interference with liturgy, and the like. Voluntaryism thus represents the religious counterpart of civil Secularization (q.v.), but while voluntaryism may plead religious reluctance to contribute to the support of institutions which the contributor conscientiously disapproves, it would not be easy to find ethical justification for secularization in the manner in which it is usually carried out.
The principles of voluntaryism are to be seen in action wherever the Church and State are separate (ef. CouRcH AND State). It has become a vital interest practically only in England, where dissenters have long voiced their unwillingness to pay for the support of the established Church of England. Their objections are doubtless conscientious, and, at the other extreme, it is felt by many High-churchmen that voluntaryism would be far better for the spiritual welfare and growth of the Church of England than the present system, which presents such unedifying spectacles as appointments to high ecclesiastical position—and even to the episcopate—often from considerations that seem distinctly political, especially as those making such appointments may be dissenters, Roman Catholics, or even non-Christians; and this would also obviate such abuses as the trial of distinctly ecclesiastical cases (e.g., those involving alleged ritualism or refusal of communion to one who, in defiance of the law of the church, has gone through the form of marriage with his deceased wife’s sister) by so-called ecclesiastical courts composed of laymen.
The term voluntaryism (better, “ voluntarism ’’) is also sometimes applied, in scholastic philosophy, to that theory of the will which, derived from
Augustine (q.v.) and taught: by such scholastics as Anselm of ‘Canterbury, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and Henry of Ghent (qq.v.), teaches, with Anselm, that the sovereign will of God rules the world, while the nature of the will is freedom, and maintains in general the primacy of the will and its independence of thought (see ScHouasticism, II., § 2, III., 3, §§ 1-2, 4, § 1; Dung Scorus, § 4).
VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA: A philanthropic, social, and Christian movement. It was inaugurated in Mar., 1896, in response to a number of requests on the part of American citizens, and was subsequently incorporated Nov. 6, 1896, under the ‘‘ Membership’ Act’ of the state of New York. It is organized in military style, having as its model the United States army, but, in conjunction with military discipline and methods of work, it possesses a thoroughly democratic form of government. Its constitution and by-laws are framed by a grand field council, which represents the minor councils of officers throughout the country annually. Though only fifteen years old, the Volunteers have representatives and branches of their benevolences and cause in almost all the principal centers of the United States. They have about forty principal homes and institutions of benevolence, many of which are Volunteer property, and are open for poor and deserving people in different sections of the country. During the year 1911, 41,905 beds have been provided for all classes of women in the Volunteer women’s homes, and 7,332 persons have been received under the care of, and permanently aided by, the organization. The Volunteer commissioned workers called upon and aided in their visitation 26,308 families. This work was done primarily in the poorer sections of the large cities. In the different permanent philanthropic homes and _ institutions 398,304 lodgings have been given, while 413,— 648 free meals were provided, and 230,622 meals were distributed to persons who paid for them, many doing so by work. In their latest undertaking, the Volunteer Hospital, located at No. 93 Gold Street, New York City, there have been 1,280 ambulance calls, 358 major operations,.7,001 days’ treatment given to patients in the surgical and medical wards, 13,943 new cases treated, 19,684 old cases treated, and a total during the year of 33,627 cases of all kinds surgically and medically treated in the institution. The Volunteer Prisoners’ League has embraced ‘upward of 75,000 members since its inauguration. It has leagues in about twenty-five state prisons, and over 70 per cent of those having left the prisons are through the ‘‘ Hope Halls” living reformed and honest lives. Through the fresh-air branch of the work many thousands of mothers and children have been taken from crowded cities to a change in the open air amid hills and rivers, lakes and dales. Through the regimental reports from Volunteer centers, it is calculated that 837,130 persons were gathered at the indoor services, while 2,108,534 persons were listeners in open-air stands. Through these services 4,534 persons were led to testify that they would live a new life.
In addition to the Volunteer reading-rooms, thousands of copies of Christian books are circulated in the state prisons, jails, hospitals, soldiers’ and chil-
dren’s homes. The Volunteers also conduct sewingclasses, do hospital-nursing, have temporary finan-
cial relief departments, and provide Thanksgiving |
and Christmas dinners. The headquarters is at No. 34 West Twenty-eighth Street, New York City.
VORST, vorst, KONRAD (CONRADUS VORS- TIUS): Dutch Arminian; b. at Cologne July 19, 1569; d. at Tonning (47 m. e. of Kiel) Sept. 29, 1622. He studied at Diisseldorf (1583-87), and then entered the college of St. Lawrence in Cologne; he next studied for two years to prepare for a mercantile life, but in 1589 again altered his intention and studied at the University of Herborn until 1593, when he went to Heidelberg and there received the theological doctorate in 1594; in 1595 he went to Basel and Geneva, where his disputations De sacramentis (Basel, 1595) and De causis salutis (1595) gained him the offer of a position as teacher; instead, he went to Steinfurt. There his De predestinatione (Steinfurt, 1597); De sancta Trinitate (1597); and De persona et officio Christt (1597) had brought upon him the suspicion of Socinianism, but in 1599 he successfully defended his orthodoxy before the theological faculty of Heidelberg. He rose to such honor in Steinfurt that in 1605 he received the additional appointments of preacher and assessor to the consistory. After the death of Arminius, he accepted, in 1610, a call to Leyden, where the Remonstrants hoped to find in him one of their chief supporters. He reprinted in 1610 his Disputationes decem de natura et attributis Dei (Steinfurt, 1602) as Tractatus theologicus de Deo sive de natura et attributis Det, and in the same year published his Anti-Bellarminus (1610). His statements in the Tractatus on God, the divine attributes, predestination, and Christ led the contra-Remonstrants to accuse him of Socinianism and gross heterodoxy. The Heidelberg theologians condemned the book, whereupon Vorst replied in his Protestatio epistolica contra theologorum Heidelbergensium (The Hague, 1610). His opponents won over James I. of England, who caused Vorst’s book to be burned in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, and informed the States-General, through his Ambassador Rudolph Winwood, that he would consider them his enemies if they tolerated the presence of such a heretic. Vorst wrote in reply his Christiana ac modesia responsio ad articulos quosdam nuper ex Anglia transmissos (Leyden, 1611), but the States-General were obliged to dismiss him, though continuing his salary, whereupon he settled as an exile in Gouda, about May, 1612. In the previous year he had seriously injured himself by reediting Socinus’ De auctoritate sancte scripture, though he later claimed to have been ignorant of the authorship of the work.
Attacks on Vorst continued without intermission and Vorst pleaded his cause with bitter intensity in a series of polemics, especially Catalogus errorum sive hallucinationum D. Sibr. Lubberta (Steinfurt, 1611); Prodromus plenioris responsi suo tempore secuturi ad declarationem Sibrandi Lubberta et ministrorum Leovardensium iteratam cautionem (Leyden, 1612); Responsum plenius ad scripta quedam eristica (1612); and Parenesis ad Sibrandum Lubbertum (Gouda, 1613). Finally, in 1619, he was condemned as a heretic by the Synod of Dort and