Arminius.
Thus they disputed;
"And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
Milton.
In fact, the subject,-as the writer has more than once observed,-is above human reason: the day will come, "when the Almighty will be judged, and will overcome;"-when the secret of his councils will be unfolded, and their justice and goodness made manifest to all.[[020]]
The friends of Arminius also observed, that he was by no means singular in his doctrine; that it was favoured by professors in Gueldres, Friesland, Utrecht, and other parts of Holland; and, that in all the provinces, it was patronized by the higher ranks of the laity. Was it fitting, they asked, that the peace of the church, and the tranquillity of the state, should be disturbed by such a dispute? by a dispute which affected no essential article of christianity; no civil, no moral, no religious observation?
CHAP. V. 1610-1617.
The principal adversary of Arminius was Gomarus, also a professor of theology at Leyden. When the election of Arminius was proposed, Gomarus announced suspicions of his orthodoxy; he afterwards raised his tone, and accused Arminius of Pelagianism, of secretly inclining to the church of Rome, and holding principles which led to general scepticism and infidelity.
Arminius died on the 19th October 1609.
Grotius made his eulogium in verse. He had hitherto applied little to these matters; he acknowledges, in a letter written in 1609, his general ignorance of them. Entering afterwards into the dispute, he became convinced that the idea, which we ought to have of the goodness and justice of God, and even the language of the scriptures and the early fathers of the church, favoured the system of Arminius, and contradicted that of Gomarus.
The prejudices against the Arminians increasing, they drew up a Remonstrance, dated the 14th January 1610, and addressed it to the States of Holland. It begins by stating what they do not believe: it afterwards propounds their own sentiments in the five articles following:[[021]]