THE REV. GERARD BRANDT.-1688. Geleerde en schrandre man, hoe hebt, gij in uw leven, &c. WISDOM and VIRTUE garlanded a life Spent in the search of Truth, above the strife Zoo'l heusch gemoet, de Wysheyt, en Geleentheyt, &c. Can KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, and AN HONEST WILL, See in this portraiture a stingless bee, And thou shalt our serene ARMINIUS see! I am reluctantly compelled, for want of room, to omit some beautiful Latin Epicenia on the Death of Arminius, by several eminent Dutch Poets. JOHN BUXTORF, Professor in the University of Basle.-1610. The unexpected extinction of JAMES ARMINIUS, that GREAT AND FAMOUS LUMINARY of the Low Countries, most justly excited within my mind emotions of the deepest grief, both on account of the general loss which the Church has thus sustained, and on account of the sad interruption to my further intimacy with SUCH A GREAT MAN, which I have personally to lament at the very moment when I was becoming better acquainted with him. For I had fondly indulged the hope, that he would have succeeded to that place in my esteem which the learned SCALIGER held, that illustrious hero of pious memory! who was also removed from me much too early.-Ep. Ec. ISAAC CASAUBON, Keeper of the Royal Library in Paris.-1610. I have no doubt, that Arminius of blessed memory, whom you mention, was A GREAT MAN; though I have not yet found one among our ministers, [the French Protestants,] who does not account him an infamous heretic. The reason of this is, because they hold the opinion of Calvin as the standard of the truth: For this man [Calvin] I have a great respect, yet I cannot endure those persons who evince a bitter hatred towards all who dissent from his opinions. Neither can I bear those persons, who, to the great offence of intelligent men and to the utter scandal of learning, distort and mangle in a shocking manner the writings of the pious Ancients, for the purpose of proving that the articles of their belief were similar to those which are generally held in our days.-Epist. Eccles. et Theolog. ADAM CLARKE, LL. D.-1802. James Arminius was born at Oudewater, in Holland, in 1560. He became professor of Divinity at Leyden in 1603; and having lived a most exemplary life, hated and persecuted by the Gomaristic party because he taught and demonstrated, "that the God of mercy willed the salvation oF ALL MEN," he died October 19th, 1609.-His motto was, BONA CONSCIENTIA PARADISUS.-Bibliog. Dict. JEREMY COLLIER, M. A.-1713. JAMES VAN HARMIN, or Arminius, Preacher at the Great Church at Amsterdam, being something shocked with Perkins's Armilla Aurea, wrote animadversions upon it, entituled Examen Prædestinationis Perkinsianæ. This performance being well received, and Junius, Divinity Professor at Leyden, dying in the year 1603 Arminius was chosen by the University to succeed him. The Calvinians, displeased with his preferment, charged him with several heterodoxies, and preferred an information against him to the States. When the business was heard at the Hague, Arminius was acquitted and sent to Leyden with a strong recommendation from the Church of Amsterdam. Thus he continued Professor till his death, which happened in October, 1609. Arminius had distinguished himself by his learning, diligence, and exemplary behaviour. To give him his due, he had a good reasoning head, and was no ordinary genius. By the strength of these advantages, he gained upon the audience, and left a strong party behind him. The controversy, between the Calvinists and those of Arminius's persuasion, was reduced to Five Points: These questions were held, by the former, to the same sense with the Lambeth Articles. Ecclesiastical History. J. J. CONYBEARE, M. A.—1824. IN respect to the immediate subject of our inquiry, [to ascertain the limits of the secondary and spiritual interpretations of scripture,] it does not appear that Arminius himself had dissented in any measure from the more prudent expositors of his age and country. Admitting fully the existence of the typical and allegorical sense, he qualifies the admission by such cautions only as had the general concurrence of all sober and reasonable divines. Episcopius, the well-known and able advocate of the Arminian tenets, though inclining more strongly to the literal and parctical exposition, neither rejects the authority nor denies the value of that which is mystical and typical. But the author, whose opinions, or rather whose practice, upon this point attracted a degree of notice and animadversion far beyond that which had been excited even by that of Calvin, was one who, in this instance alone, seems to have chosen the path of the great Reformer. I allude to the illustrious and accomplished champion of the Remonstrant cause, Hugo Grotius. In his commentaries upon the scriptures, especially on those of the Old Testament, this eminent scholar betrayed an attachment, perhaps somewhat excessive, to the more learned and temperate of the Jewish expositors; and, after their example, restricted to the immediate history of the chosen people many passages that had hitherto been more generally considered as prophetic of the Messiah and his Kingdom. It was not to be expected that the Remonstrants, either from the general character of their theological views, or from the feelings with which they were but too naturally inclined to regard their Calvinistic adversaries, should do otherwise than oppose that theory of interpretation which had been, in the first instance, opposed to themselves. The well-known P. a Limborch censures only the violence done to the sacred text, by extorting from it at every step prophetical and spiritual meanings, which were unauthorized by its obvious scope and tendency. Many, however, among the Remonstrants were far from imitating the pious and Christian reverence with which Limborch, after the example of his predecessors Arminius and Grotius, was disposed to regard and treat the inspired word. Some of them inclined, on various points, much more decidedly to the Socinian scheme; and these found, so far at least as our present subject is concerned, a popular and indefatigable champion in the well-known Le Clerc. This ingenious but often injudicious writer, disposed to question almost every opinion which had received the sanction of his predecessors, and constantly mistaking boldness and novelty of assertion for liberality and freedom from prejudice, not only rejected those spiritual expositions of the Old Testament which were not immediately confirmed by the authority of the New, but carried his notions of accommodation to such an excess as nearly to invalidate the prophetic character of the former, and, indirectly at least, to depreciate the divine authority of the latter and of Him who was its Minister.-Bampton Lectures. THE REV. TOBIAS CONYERS.--1657. IN as much as the name of ARMINIANS is violently obtruded upon us, who believe, that Christ died for ALL, and tasted death for EVERY MAN, according to the scriptures, whereby our persons are endeavoured to be rendered odious, and the blessed word of the kingdom in our mouths scandalous and offensive, I judged it reasonable to offer the author's judgment to English view: Not that I desire the translation of his judgment] should be looked upon as the interpretation of mine, but that I might put an opportunity into the hands of indifferent men of resolving themselves, that Arminius was no such monster in religion as some men have attempted to represent him, and that his name stands undeservedly blotted in the ecclesiastie rolls of continual obloquy. It was a worthy essay of your Highness upon occasion at Whitehall, "That it was not so much WHAT a man held, but How he held it." A religious calenture hath always been a dangerous malady in the eye of state-physicians. I am confident the doctor [Arminius] in this draught of himself will abundantly please you, in whom LEARNING and INGENUITY, PIETY and MODERATION Contend together for the mastery, and this by the happy ducture of christian principles; which if the like TENDERNESS, CANDOUR, and MODESTY, had been used by the Reformed Churches in Scotland and Geneva, they had not given that cause, by their faction and disobedience, to the Duke of Savoy, and other persons of great and lesser quality, to complain of them, and to endeavour the extirpation of their religion. Witness those sad massacres in France, that lately in Piedmont, so fatal to the Hugonots barricadoed from the stroke of justice with their own engines. * It is well known, my Lord, what countenance the scriptures carry with the doctrine of GENERAL ATONEMENT, and how mnch it looks like the doctrine of the Church of England, (so we call it,) and that the major part of the Bishops and Doctors, during the Episcopal Hierarchy, were deeply baptized thereinto, and the late king [Charles the First himself: Yet did they never discountenance piety and learning in men of the contrary judgment, either in country or University, by rendering them uncapable of employment either civil or ecclesiastic, or draw them to recant their opinions before their institution and induction into any place: Witness the credit and promotion of Sibbes, Preston, Prideaux, Holdsworth, Brownrigg, Love, Hull, &c. Nay, great Strafford, President of the This is a very important testimony in favour of the genuine Arminian complexion of the doctrine of the Church of England. It proceeded from a man who entered into the ministry during the Inter-regnum, and became a celebrated Independent minister. He preached before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, only a short time before the Restoration. The anecdote about the Earl of Strafford, and the impartiality displayed by the royal government in the distribution of church preferment, arc exceedingly interesting, and were never contradicted in that age of contradiction. Court in the North, did, in the hearing of some persons who are still living testimonies thereof, publicly rebuke some ministers of the Arminian party, so called, (though he himself a great promoter of that interest,) for bearing themselves high upon court-favour, and told them, "It was the will of his master, [king Charles I,] " and of the doctors of the Church, that all moderation should be used "herein!". The scene is altered: These plucked off the stage, and your Lordship taken up. I should be highly injurious to those many sacred vows and protestations your Highness hath so often made for CHRISTIAN LIBERTY, should I entertain a thought you would act your part with less tenderness and indulgency, than any of those that have had their fatal exit. My Lord, you have been a man of war: LIBERTY was that motto in your ensign which encouraged the soldiers of Christ to fight and pray under you, and for which (I make no question) victory came so often and lighted upon your banner. I beseech you, by the mercies of God and by whatever is dear or near unto you, that you would not expose us by your authority to the wills of those who are straitened in their principles, as their affections in BROTHERLY TOLERATION are shut up against us likewise; but that all your Acts of Grace, like the orders of Heaven issuing out from your Great Master, may impartially look to the good of all. I cannot, with the zeal of Arminius, petition your Highness for a National Synod, and to establish ECCLESIASTIC SANCTION by civil authority, lest it have the same event (or somewhat worse) with the Dort Conference, Anno 1618, and 1619. But salving the honour and consciences of those gentlemen, the Commissioners for Approbation of Ministers, I must needs think the nature of ORTHODOX and HETERODOX would be better proved by a subscription to a known CONFESSION OF FAITH drawn up in scripture terms and phrases, according to which the preachers of the gospel might and ought to frame and leve! their judgments and doctrines, than by the sudden and extempore resolves to a few unpremeditated questions till the present occasion locked up in the breasts of some particular men.-Dedication. It is the chief intent of the author, (as far as I can judge,) next to the vindication of truth and himself, to set thy judgment right in the great points of PREDESTINATION and PROVIDENCE, and to shew the happy compliance betwixt the free and unmerited grace of God and man's will; not sacrilegiously admitting the latter as a co-partner with the former in the work of Conversion, but with much respect subordinating the one to the other, reserving unto each their peculiar virtues and operations, making the New Creation so to animate the Old, as to restore weakened powers and debilitated faculties to much of their ancient strength and vigour, and fit them for action. Surely had I thought the Doctor had been an enemy to Grace, as too many of the great clerks of the world are, I should have wished his JUDGMENT had for ever slept in darkness, and never been awaked by me or any other to see the English light! * Conyers urges old Oliver in this place with a true Arminian argument; and it is known to have had its effect: For after the experience which he had personally had of the hollowness and insincerity,[not only of the Presbyterian Calvinists, but likewise of several of the Independents, he paid many marked attentions to the Arminians, who were then under oppression. Those of them who met his advances, and whose number was very small, were treated with great kindness by the Protector. Conyers alludes in this paragraph to the shameful proceedings of the Calvinistic Commissions of TRIERS AND EJECTORS; for a most ample account of whom, consult JACKSON's Life of John Goodwin, But by that lively portraiture which he hath drawn of himself, I am apt to think his mind was well beautified with many fair ideas of truth, and his understanding enlightened with a ray from that DIVINE LIGHT which lighteth every one that cometh into the world. (John i. 9.) "I cannot attribute the growth and increase of the Supralapsarian and Sublapsarian doctrine, in some of the Reformed Churches, to any thing so much as the untutored zeal of some men, (otherwise eminent in their generation,) in the beginning of the Reformation; who, having fallen out with the Church of Rome, and that upon the account of their strange innovations and ungodly errors, their mass, sacraments, works, merit, indulgences, pardons, &c., they tore away indeed much of this superstition, and testified to the world their dislike of all such erroneous tenets and cursed practices. But when, like wise surgeons, they should have known when the cure had been nigh finished, they still continued lancing the sore deeper and deeper, till they had let out some of the very vitals of religion, and maimed the doctrine of Christianity in some of the principal members thereof. What was orthodox at Rome must needs be heterodox at Geneva, for fear (as I imagine) lest the orifice should close, and the body ecclesiastic return to its former temper. How doth Calvin beat his head, through the whole body of his INSTITUTIONS, (the more to alienate, as I conceive, the minds of men from the Romish religion,) to draw up the Protestant principles in the greatest contrariety imaginable to those of Rome, fearing lest he should never get far enough both in doctrine and discipline from them.+ Neither am I engaged in my judgment against all or half of the Protestant Churches: The major part are of the same mind in the doctrine of Predestination, as the author will satisfy thee in the ensuing discourse. I know no rigid Predestinarians, but those of Subauda [Savoy] and Geneva, the Presbyterate Scots, (who, according to their ancient league and friendship to comply with the French, have fetched much of their religion thence,) and those at home [in England] upon whose spirits the doctrine of the Kirk hath been too much ascendant.-Preface to "the Just Man's [Arminius's] Defence." JOHN A. CORVINUS.-1613. At the very commencement of the Reformation, there were not wanting men of piety and lovers of peace, who, as they foresaw the certain destruction of the reviving church if this evil was not timely prevented, devoted all their powers to crush those early contentions in their origin. In these our days, also, there have not been wanting mediators of peace, who admonished the defenders of the Truth, that there has been contention enough for TRUTH in the Christian world, that a retreat must at length be sounded, and that the camp of their allies and that of the opposite party, which have been too long at a distance from each other, must now be united. Amongst these peace-makers, that reverend man, James ARMINIUS, of pious memory, is entitled to one of the highest places. He was much affected on contemplating the miserably convulsed state of Christendom; the continued and anxious thoughts and cares about the establishment of a peace so greatly and so long desired preyed on his mind: And as he felt the greatest possible concern for the success of this pacification, so he omitted no opportunity of instilling similar feel f On this subject see the Letter of Grotius to Thuanus, page 314; and the remarks of Vassor, page v. |