When the Presbytery had heard all these things, they held another consultation on the subject; and, at length, granted their assent to the proposed dismissal, with the following stipulations: "FIRST. That Arminius do not leave Amsterdam, to enter upon his new province, until the Church of this city have some prospect of obtaining another Pastor of learning and piety, and Baselius, if possible. SECONDLY. That after the proposed conference with Gomarus, on certain points of Christian Doctrine, in the presence of the Deputies of the Churches, Arminius shall by a candid explanation of his sentiments, remove all suspicion of heterodoxy.-THIRDLY. That if circumstances hereafter occur to induce Arminius spontaneously to relinquish the situation of Professor, or if the necessities of the Church of Amsterdam demand his services, he shall be at full liberty to resume his ministerial functions."*

This ecclesiastical decree was presented, on the following day, the 15th of April, to the honourable the Burgomasters of Amsterdam, who had previously convened the Court of Aldermen, and consulted them on the subject; and they readily added their assent to the decree. When the Curators of the University were informed of this general acquiescence, they expressed their gratitude; and, having soon afterwards obtained the personal consent of Arminius, they returned home with uncommon delight.

All these facts concerning the call of Arminius to the Professorship, we have chosen to relate the more diffusely, and with the greater minuteness,† because much light has been shed on this transaction by the manuscript Diary of Uitenbogardt, who was not only present as an eye and ear-witness throughout the affair, but was also himself the principal actor in it; and because some writers in the present day, (1724,) in reviewing those scenes, have amassed many statements concerning them, which far exceed all the boundaries of truth: This has arisen in part from their gross ignorance of the transactions, and in part from bad faith. In this particular, James TRIGLANDIUS seems deserving of the greatest share of censure: For if this man's testimony, respecting the frequent, and obviously servile and fawning applications which Arminius is said to have made to his colleagues for the purpose of obtaining his dismissal,—and respecting the whole course of his life, of which he makes mention in the 287th page of his Ecclesiastical History :-If this man's testimony deserve to be received, then undoubtedly Ar

The Acts of the Amsterdam Presbytery.

+ The reader is reminded, that the whole narrative of these proceedings is in the language of the younger Brandt.

minius did many things which must be accounted unworthy of an honourable and serious teacher in the Church. But we may form some estimate of the infelicitous manner in which he has fulfilled the duties of an ingenuous Historian, from this circumstance, that most of those things which have the greatest tendency to excite enmity against Arminius, and which, in his narrative of Arminius's call to the Professorship, he pretends to have extracted from the very Acts of the Presbytery of Amsterdam, are certainly not to be found in those Acts which were signed that year by the ecclesiastical senate. The Acts themselves contain no account of that kind, unless we reckon as the authentic Acts a certain rude and unfaithful relation of those transactions, which, at a great distance of time, (14 years afterwards,) was composed in the year 1617, during the most feverish heat of the controversies about Predestination: Peter Plancius, that unwearied slanderer of Arminius even after his decease, wrote the greatest part of that narrative, to gratify Adrian Smout, one of the most bitter adversaries which the Remonstrants ever had; and Peter took upon himself the charge of having it then inserted in the Acts of the Amsterdam Presbytery.

John Rulæus, not long ago a respectable minister in Amsterdam, has made it evident that Triglandius had undoubtedly followed in the footsteps of this reviler; and that the account which he has given of the Life of that great man, and of his call to the Professorship, was derived from Plancius's narrative. Rulæus, pressed by the genuine force of truth, was compelled to make this confession, in the very pamphlet in which he had endeavoured

The very low estimation in which the character of Triglandius was held as an Historian, may be learnt from the following passage in BRANDT's Preface to the Second Volume of the History of the Reformation in the Low Countries :-" I beg that my faithfulness and sincerity in accounting for those events may not be called in question: For I sometimes found myself obliged to recede a little from their paths; which is to be understood particularly with respect to that known writer of Memoirs, on whom one of your late [Contra-remonstrant] brethren, the Rev. Abraham Van de Korput, a very industrious author, in his Life of Melancthon, passes this censure, 'that he was accustomed to listen to idle tales, rather than the true relation of things; 'that he stuffed his writings with trifles, and seldom considered what he said." Whence you may judge how far one may depend upon all those other writers, that follow him, almost on every point, in the accounts which they give of the ecclesiastical differences."—How different was the practice of Triglandius from that of Brandt himself, who in the same preface, having described the use which he has made of his authorities, gives the following account of his own impartiality, a quality which he possessed in greater perfection than any historian whom I have ever perused:-"I will venture to affirm, that I have as little spared the infirmities of my friends and of their patrons, as the crimes of their enemies. History must not conceal Truth, how unpalatable soever it may be: If she does, she will find herself maimed in her best members."

with sufficient acrimony to animadvert upon Arminius, and upon his defender, my father Gerard Brandt, of pious memory. The testimonies also of the reverend gentlemen, Hall, Ursine, and Le Maire, which are cited by Triglandius and added to the statement made by Plancius, do not seem to militate against Arminius: For they relate to the earnest intreaties which he is said to have employed, and to the promise which he gave, "that he would never utter any thing in the University of Leyden, which might be prejudicial to the peace of the Church; and that he would reserve to himself his private opinions and such as were repugnant to [consensui] the common agreement of the Reformed Churches, until the meeting of the next National Synod." For,-not to mention the little reliance, which, it may be supposed, can be placed on these private declarations that were signed, upwards of seven years after the death of Arminius, for the gratification of the zealot Plancius;-Arminius always made the very same declaration as that which is contained in these testimonies, and deferred the full exposition of his sentiments on Divine Predestination till a General Council of the Churches should be assembled: But, at length, when the altercations of several persons about this subject had increased, at the command of his superiors, he disclosed all the sentiments and scruples of his mind in the assembly of the States of Holland. The course of the subsequent narrative will shew whether and how far Arminius can with justice and propriety be accounted guilty of having violated his promise, and of being the leader and author of breaking the peace of the Church. The following expressions, which occur in a letter ad

This is a very satisfactory explanation of all the truce-breaking and unfaithfulness which have been falsely attributed to Arminius. When, in consequence of political events and a sudden change in the constitution of the country, the Dutch Calvinists were encouraged by Prince Maurice to urge their demands for complete ecclesiastical supremacy in the United Provinces, one of the weakest and most scurrilous men in their body wrote his own unsupported relation of the call of Arminius to the Divinity Professorship, fourteen years after the transaction had occurred. As any innovation on ecclesiastical or civil usages was tolerated in those days of Calvinistic ascendancy, Plancius transcribed this ex parte narrative in one of the Church-registers for 1617, not for 1603; and it has since been quoted occasionally by the malevolent, but more frequently by the most ignorant, of the succeeding writers of that party, as the Acts of the Amsterdam Class, though it was not the composition of that body,whose ACTS, or those of any other assembly, are of no force or validity whatever, unless they be bona fide registers of ecclesiastical transactions, written out at the period when they actually occurred. Fortunately however for the interests of historic truth, abundant materials for the refutation of this vile misrepresentation of facts exist in the letters and memorials of several of the Calvinistic contemporaries of Arminius; and this accusation against our author has, in consequence, never been repeated by the respectable historians of that party.

The late Rev. Thomas Scott, who, when descanting on Arminianism and its early

dressed to his friend Uitenbogaert on the 26th of April, 1603, soon after he had obtained his dismissal, display his modesty of mind, and freedom from even the semblance of ambition, in this crisis of his affairs :-" One thing alone makes me very anxious: How can I satisfy the great expectations which have been raised? How can I render myself deserving to have had such uncommon exertions employed in my favour? But I console myself with this single reflection, that I have made no interest to gain the Professorship; and that, before the Curators formed the resolution to call me to this office, they were warned about the things which have actually happened."

Our author, in the mean time, felt no fear respecting the conference which had been appointed between him and Gomarus, but awaited its issue in complete tranquillity of spirit. And while his familiar friends were discussing among themselves the different advices which ought to be given about the mode of holding this conference, and there were not wanting persons who were desirous of using their influence with the Curators, to have this conference held in private with Gomarus, rather than in the presence of the deputies of the Churches,-Arminius, so far from wishing to listen to this counsel and to elude the condition which had been stipulated with the people of Amsterdam, adopted the following language, in a letter to his friend Uitenbogaert, on the 30th of April, 1603: "To what suspicions shall I not, in that case, be liable? I shall not only be suspected of heresy; but the surmise will be, that I entertain such a distrust of my own cause, as not to have the courage to enter into a conference in the presence of the ecclesiastical deputies. I would enter into a conference with the whole of the Presbytery, nay with any two Presbyteries, rather than give the slightest occasion of my being viewed in any other light, than that of a man who, using all good conscience in every thing, will not fear the most prolix conference, or even the most rigid examination."

This Conference was appointed to take place on the 6th of May, according to previous stipulation; and it was accordingly commenced on that day, at the Hague, in the house of the noble

history, is certainly not entitled to the appellation of "a competently-qualified historian," makes the following remarks on a much less exceptionable statement of this affair in the Historical Freface to "the Articles of the Synod of Dort:"-" How far he [Arminius] fulfilled this solemn promise and attestation, not only the following history, but even the histories of his most decided advocates, fully shew. In fact, he fulfilled it in the very same manner, that the subscriptions and most solemn engagements of numbers in our church, at their ordination, are fulfilled."-The narrative in the text will be deemed, even by the admirers of Mr. Scott, a sufficient reply to this unwarranted conclusion.

Lord of Norderwick, in the presence of Arnold Cornelison and Werner Helmichius, (who attended as the deputies of the Churches of Holland,) and of those very honourable and learned individuals, N. Kromhout, R. Hogerbeets, and J. Uitenbogaert, whom the Curators of the University had specially invited to honour the proceedings with their company.

Gomarus commenced the business, by expressing his surprise and regret at not perceiving, among the company, any deputies from the Church of Amsterdam, though the noble Curators had, by a most polite letter addressed to the Ecclesiastical Senate of that city, requested that some one in their name should be present at this meeting. He did not conceive, the absence of those on whose account principally he had come to the Hague, was a "proper course of conduct." He also affirmed, "that he had little acquaintance with the discourses and the doctrines of Arminius; that the greatest part of the scruples concerning that divine had been circulated by the pastors of Amsterdam; and that they ought therefore to have instructed and informed him about the mode and matter of this conference."-But, when the Curators had briefly explained to him the principal purpose of that meeting, he declared, "that, although he should prefer not to have had this province imposed on him, yet he thought this was due to the cause of Truth-that, at the request of the brethren, he might perform the duties of an advocate, with which he had been invested."

Arminius, on the other hand, testified the extreme pleasure which he felt on beholding the most delightful and long-desired opportunity, which was then offered to him, of vindicating his innocence and reputation.-An agreement having afterwards been made respecting the order and the particulars of the matters to be discussed, he thought this instruction ought to have the precedence of all others: "That not every difference about religion has regard to [substantiam] the Fundamentals of Faith; and that those who differ on some points, provided they preserve the foundation entire, ought to be tolerated." For the confirmation of this sentiment, he immediately quoted a remarkable passage from St. Augustine. But when he wished to produce more sentiments to the same effect, from the writings both of ancient and modern divines, he was interrupted by Gomarus, who thought such a course unnecessary, and "that the sole object of their inquiry must be, whether those controverted points upon which they were about to treat ought to be considered as essentials, or not." Gomarus maintained, that they were essentials; and after