PREFACE.

THERE is a country almost within sight of the shores of our island," says a highly accomplished writer, "whose literature is less known to us than that of Persia or Hindostan: A country, too, distinguished for its civilization, and its important contributions to the mass of human knowledge.* Its language claims a close kindred with our own; and its government has been generally such as to excite the sympathies of an English spirit. It is indeed, most strange, that while the Poets [and may I not add the Divines?] of Germany have found hundreds of admirers and thousands of critics, those of a land nearer in position-more allied by habit and by history with our thoughts and recollections-should have been passed by unnoticed.

"Classics painters, men of science-such names as Erasmus, Grotius, Lipsius, and Boerhaave-fill the pages of the literary history of the Netherlands; and it would be strange indeed, if these pages were quite deserted by the sons of song.

Events the most extraordinary, and characters the most original and sublime, arrest the attention in the varied but interesting history of Holland. Nothing can be more imposingly tragic than the story of the old Barneveldt and of the hapless De Witts. The struggles in favour of civil and religious freedom, and their triumphant results-the proud march of the Batavian republic in increasing influence and dignity+-every thing seems to have conspired to

"We owe to the Dutch the discovery of the arts of Printing and Oil Painting ; we owe to them the Microscope and the Pendulum."

+ la enumerating "the circumstances which brought on, together with the destruction of Laud, the overthrow of the Church and State, the murder of King Charles the First, and the long miseries of the nation," Mr. Southey with great propriety menions the establishment of the Dutch Republic as one of those causes.""Nothing in the history of the modern world had as yet so strongly and so worthily excited the sympathy of upright and intelligent minds, as the struggle in which the Netherlanders engaged, for their civil and religious liberties. Never was good cause more virtuously and gloriously defended. But by those wars the way was prepared for that preponderance of the French power which has produced such evils to Europe, and in all human likelihood will yet produce more: And as the doctrinal disputes which in eir consequences subverted the Church of England, were principally derived from Synod of Dort; so from the Dutch wars were the seeds of English Republicanism ported. English and Scotchmen were trained in those wars as soldiers of fortune kady to embark in any cause. A great proportion of the trading part of the commuty, especially of the Londoners, seeing the commercial prosperity of the Dutch, puted it to the form of their commonwealth; for they were too ignorant to know what had been the previous condition of the Low Countries. And at the same time, any of the higher classes had imbibed, from their classical studies, prejudices in favour of a popular government, which are as congenial to the generous temper of experienced youth, as they are inconsistent with sound knowledge and mature judgment. Thus while some men of surpassing talents were so far infatuated with political theories, that, for the prospect of realizing them, they were willing to incur the danger and the guilt of exciting a Civil War, others were ready to co-operate with en for the purpose of destroying Episcopacy, and establishing with the discipline of eva, the irreversible decrecs of Calvinism by rigorous laws: And they who, for hese secret purposes which they dared not as yet avow, systematically attacked the

give interest to a literature and a language which have hitherto scarcely penetrated beyond their own natural and narrow bounds. The land that gave birth to a Laurence Coster-to him who created the means by which knowledge and civilization were conveyed through half the world,-cannot be neglected in days like these. The country of Rubens and Vandyck, of Rembrandt and Ruysdaal, and a hundred besides whose glory is gone forth to the ends of the earth,' has children too of the elder-the diviner art. In Holland the seeds of poetical genius have been scattered-in Holland they have budded and blossomed-they have been brightened by the dew of natural feeling-they have been shone on by the sun of enthusiasm: They are fair-they are fragrant-and we have ventured to gather and transplant them to our own flower-garden.

Nor, among the claims of Holland to the attention of mankind, should it be forgotten that it was the country in which Haller, and Linnæus, and Descartes pursued their studies and formed their characters.

"Many causes have contributed to the neglect of the Dutch writers; and some of those causes have no doubt had their origin in a false estimate of the character of the people, and in their own inattention to their language and literature. A more potent cause, however, has been a real ignorance of the existence of any thing that could put in its claim to the name of Belgian Poetry. The essential character of the Poetry of Holland-that which marks it in every age and in all its varieties-is a high tone of religious feeliug, a sublimity borrowed from devout associations, and especially from the sacred writings.*

"The sixteenth century is not celebrated for its poets only. It had its heroes in De Ruiter and Van Tromp: Its statesmen in Barneveldt and the De Witts. Its learned writers, are Huig de Groot (Grotius), Daniel and Nicolaus Heins (Heinsius), P. Schryver (Scriverius), Salmas (Salmasius), John Frederick Gronov (Gronovius), Caspar van Baerle (Barlæus), John Vos (Vossius), and many other eminent Classics. Its men of science-Leoninus, Aldegonde, and Dousa. For its painters it had Rubens, Vandyk, Rembrandt, Mierevelt, the Teniers, the Van de Veldes, Jordaans, Kuyp, the Ostades, Gerard Douw, Mieris, John and Philip Wouvermans, Metsu, Berchem, Paul Potter, Pynaker, the Ruysdaels, Van Huysem, Wynants, Steen; and during this period the Universities at Groningen, Utrecht, and Gelderland, and the celebrated school at Amsterdam were established.

"The age of which we speak,' says the learned professor Siegenbreek, and more especially the earlier part of it, was in every

government, were strengthened by the aid of many wise and moderate men, (the best of the nation,) who from the purest motives opposed the injurious measures of the crown, till the same sense of duty which had induced them to resist it in its strength, made them exert themselves and sacrifice themselves for its support in its hour of weakness and distress."-Book of the Church.

* The very name of Grotius calls up all that the imagination can conceive of greatness and true fame. His most elaborate poem in the Dutch language, Bewijs van den Waeren Godtsdienst, "Evidence of True Religion," was written during his confinement at Loevestijn, in the year 1611. He laid the ground-work of that attention to religious duties which is so universal in Holland. The authority of his great name, always associated with Christianity- with peace-with literature-with freedom and suffering and virtue-has ever been a bulwark of truth and morals.-BOWRING'S Batavian Anthology.

'point of view so glorious to the Dutch nation, that it would be difficult to discover, in the history of any other people, a period of 'such resplendent fame and greatness.""-BOWRING's Bat. Anthology. I re-iterate the complaint of our neglect of Dutch writers, which Mr. Bowring has so eloquently stated in the preceding paragraphs; and I apply it to ARMINIUS, and to his doctrinal system, which has received higher commendations from men of opposite religious persuasions than any other since the days of the Apostles, and which therefore, on this occasion, requires the less of my sincere praise to recommend it to universal regard. The rise of Arminianism was only a continuation of the struggle for religious liberty in the Low Countries, between the learned among the Laity and the Calvinistic clergy, as has been correctly related by Le Vassor and other equally impartial

At the time when Pope Paul the Fifth was exerting himself to suppress the disputes concerning Grace and Predestination in his Church, the Protestants of Holland were divided among themselves upon the same questions. Whether influenced by former prepossessions in its favour, or because it appeared to them better adapted for confuting the dogmas of the Romish Church, and establishing those of the Reformation, Luther and the principal Reformers had hastily embraced the hypothesis of St Augustine. But Luther himself, or at least his carly disciples, soon perceived the inconvenient and troublesome consequences of the Augustinian System; and as that of the Greek Fathers appeared both more ancient and more rational, Melanchthon adopted it; and his moderate sentiments prevailed among those who adhered to the Augsburgh Confession. Calvin, Zanchius, Beza, and the major part of the Reformed, continued steadily attached to the dogmas of St. Augustine; which some of them greatly overstrained, by employing more difficult expressions, as the rigid Thomists have done in the Church of Rome. About the beginning of that age, many of the Reformed divines began to open their eyes to the example of the Lutherans; and after having examined the holy scripture with much attention, the opinion of St. Chrysostom and of the ancient Greek Fathers appeared to them preferable to that of [St. Augustine] the Bishop of Hippo, whose acquaintance with either the Old or the New Testament was certainly very superficial.

As the writings of Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Bullinger, were highly esteemed in Holland, where those works had greatly contributed to make the Reformation palatable, the Magistrates and well-informed laymen of the Province evinced a stronger inclination for the mild and moderate opinions of these divines respecting Grace and Predestination, than for the hypothesis of the rigid Reformed: At all events, they believed them to be perfectly tenable and consistent with the Reformation embraced by the Province. But, on the other hand, the greatest part of the Ministers, who had studied religion only in the writings of Calvin and Beza, obstinately maintained the doctrines of their masters; so that a great difference of principles existed between the Clergy and the Magistrates. Each of them had conceived a contrary idea of that which they called THE REFORMATION, or REFORMED DOCTRINE. The drgy understood by these words, the doctrines of theology, as explained by their great authors, and inserted in the Confessions of Faith which the early Reformers had drawn up. Those primitive servants of God were influenced by good intentions; but they did not perceive that in endeavouring to furnish, in the formularies of faith and a the Catechisms, a complete and consistent system of divinity, they had embodied them their own private speculations, as if they were something undoubted and essential. The Magistrates and learned laymen of Holland, on their side, contended, hat, as the Reformation comprised only a purer form of worship, divested of the vain perstitions of the Church of Rome, with a greater liberty concerning doctrines which are not clearly revealed in the holy scripture, it could not be said, the Reformation was founded on what some persons have deemed the most difficult and thorny questions a Theology.

The ministers, always warm in the defence of their own opinions and prejudices, frequently exclaimed, that the Magistrates were wanting in zeal for sound doctrine; and they, in their turn, complained, that the clergy were hard and inflexible folk, who would have the whole world blindly to embrace their peculiar sentiments. When the zalous churchmen brought before the magistrates those who opposed the theory of alvin and Beza concerning Predestination and Grace, and accused them as persons to overthrew the foundations of the Reformation, the wisest and most discerning of VOL. I.

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authorities: And though the modest defence of his own scriptural sentiments, respecting the perfections of God as exemplified in his gracious and equitable conduct towards mankind, was both in its tendency and in its results, one of the greatest blessings which Arminius could have conferred on his country; yet we are to this day accustomed to hear the insidious lamentations of the semi-infidel Bayle, concerning "the impolicy of mooting those questions," repeated by intelligent persons without due reflection and in the absence of the requisite information.-See pages 66-75.

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I had prepared a Preface, which contained many needful explanatory notices respecting my author: But the Testimonies which I have quoted in elucidation of his personal character and the effects of his doctrines, occupy, with greater profit to the reader, the pages which it was my intention to devote to this purpose. An opportunity will hereafter be afforded of explaining myself more fully, in a General Introduction, which I reserve for the commencement of the Third Volume: In this, I shall be the more readily excused, since I have so recently given my opinion of Arminius, in that voluminous performance, " Calvinism and Arminianism Compared in their Principles and Tendency," against which some of my high Predestinarian friends have manifested great displeasure. In the mean time, I leave the learned among my countrymen to decide upon the manner in which this Translation has been executed; and may be permitted to declare, that it has been my endeavour to make it clear and faithful, particularly in those instances in which doctrinal matters are the Magistrates used to ask these new inquisitors, if it was impossible to be a good Reformed Christian without receiving the doctrines of St. Augustine and his followers? From the commencement of the Reformation in Holland, the sentiments opposed to the system of that doctor had always prevailed in the town of Tergow: The States of Holland had not granted even their formal approbation of the Confession of Faith received in the Belgic Churches. Was not this then a proof, that those prudent magistrates believed that articles had been put into this formulary, which were not absolutely necessary, and which should have been expressed in a manner more mild and less liable to scandalize those who could not relish all the peculiar opinions of the first Reformers? This appears very probable, when history informs us, that the States of Holland, otherwise strongly opposed to the convention of a General Synod of the seven United Provinces, consented, in the year 1597, that such an assembly should be held, for the purpose of narrowly revising the Confession of Faith and of correcting it in a peaceful and charitable spirit.-LE VASSOR's Hist. Louis XIII.

Bayle, in his disputes against the wisdom and the goodness of God, being pushed by his antagonists, and compelled to declare what sort of a Christian he pretended to be, professed himself a Predestinarian Protestant of the most rigid sort ; but no Protestant of any denomination ever was simple enough to believe him. Bayle frequently took occasion to shew his disapprobation of the Remonstrants. The true cause of his disgust seems to have been this; they endeavoured to prove the reasonableness of Christianity, and to vindicate the goodness of God, and would not give up the divine perfections as unintelligible and indefensible." They ought not," says he, "to have removed the bounds set up by their fathers." I should have thought that the apostles and evangelists were to be looked upon as our Christian fathers, rather than the Calvins and the Bezas. - They ought not, says he, to have made disturbances. But that was not their fault; it was the fault of those who quarrelled with them, and would not tolerate them." Their refinements," says he, "signified nothing, and they could not defend Christianity any better than the Calvinists; for it is all one, whether God be the author and the punisher of sin, or whether he foresees sin, and permits it, and then punishes it with eternal misery." These and the rest of his objections drawn up with such a profusion of words, and so much pains, and parade, and indecent language, were considered and fully confuted by Le Clerc in his Bibliotheque Chois. "The system of the Remonstrants," as he is pleased to observe, "is full of considerable errors." This is the mean and spiteful remark of a man who knew almost as little of divinity as he did of natural philosophy.-JORTIN's Dissertations.

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