ARMINIUS, or as the Dutch called him, Harmensen, was born at Oudewater—a quaint old town of South Holland, lying on the Yssel, and about half-way from Rotterdam to Utrecht. This was in the year 1560—fourteen years after the death of Luther and four years previous to that of Calvin.
The parents of Arminius were peasants, and while he was a child their humble home was burned by Spanish soldiers—his parents murdered, and he left an orphan. For some time the young boy was employed as a servant in the village “herberg” or inn, but having attracted the attention of several well-to-do people by his dexterity and cleverness, he was kindly taken under the care of a clergyman, who superintended his education until he was fitted to enter the University of Utrecht. During his course at the University this benefactor died, but another came to his rescue, who transferred him to the University of Marburg. From thence he was removed again to Leyden, and thus enjoyed superior advantages for acquiring what of learning and culture the Dutch, then the first scholars in Europe, had to confer.
At length, at the age of 22, to round out his studies, he was sent to Geneva, where he had the high privilege
* This article is an extract from “James Arminius: or False to his Trust,” by the Rev. George Sayles Bishop, D.D., New Jersey, and recently published by the Sovereign Grace Union (98 Camberwell Grove, London, S.E.5), (price 2d). It gives a very good account in short compass of Arminius and his teaching. Dr Watts, Belfast, used to say that Arminius never did anything to fight the battle of the Reformation, and when he appeared on the scene it was only as a disturber of the peace.—Editor.
of studying under Beza, the successor of Calvin, in whose arms the great Reformer died. Already, in Geneva, the spirit of Arminius began to show itself. To great activity of mind and ardour of inquiry, he added a self-sufficiency and self-assertion, which soon expressed itself in whispered criticisms upon the professors, and in an artful sowing of the seeds of discord, chiefly by means of private conversations, which resulted in drawing together a party of young malcontents, and led to his dismissal.
This circumstance impaired to no small degree the confidence hitherto placed in Arminius—but, regarding his vagaries as the crudities and unintentional irregularities of youth, which larger and matured experience would overcome, his friends resolved to overlook them, and projected for him an extended tour through Italy, including Rome. Here again, however, the unhappy youth proved false to principle. In Rome he adopted the maxim: “Do as Romans do.” At least he is accused of kissing the Pope’s toe, and of a secret understanding with Bellarmine, the chief antagonist of Protestantism.
His cleverness, however, still blinded his Netherland friends to his inward dishonesty. In spite of strange hints, now and then, of that which was not loyal, Arminius was elected one of the pastors of Amsterdam. Here, while posing as most orthodox among the orthodox, he surreptitiously promulgated opinions, the inevitable tendency of which was to undermine and overthrow the doctrine professed and to stir distrust and dissension. He was soon accused of not loving the Doctrines of Grace, and many of his brethren began to look upon him and upon his expressions with deep apprehension.
At length, in 1602, the illustrious Francis Junius, Professor of Divinity in Leyden, died, and the friends of Arminius conspired to place him in the vacant seat. Notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts of the staunch orthodox, the thing was accomplished, and Arminius became the professor—the Classis, however, in setting him apart, exacted from him a solemn and particular promise and pledge that if it should be found that he held any notions other than those of the Belgic Confession, he would confess this in private to his ecclesiastical peers and conscientiously refrain from disseminating them broadcast.
Arminius agreed to this, and on entering upon his professorship, he seemed to take much pains to clear himself from all suspicion by publicly proclaiming the
received doctrines—doctrines which he afterward as publicly contradicted and which his intimate friends acknowledge were against his convictions at the very time.
This course of things went on a year or two, when it was all at once discovered that Arminius was in the constant practice of maintaining one set of opinions in the professor’s chair, and another and opposing set by means of private manuscripts and talks among the students. He was also accustomed while publicly commending the characters and sentiments of the Reformed divines, to artfully insinuate such things as were adapted indirectly to bring them into discredit—lower their influence and weaken their hold on the popular mind.
It was observed along with this, that those who associated with Arminius became disaffected—fell off in their warmth of attachment to principle, and were often dropping words and hints which could not but do damage to the faith and the peace of the Church. “In this posture of affairs,” says Dr Samuel Miller, to whose valuable essay upon the Synod of Dort I am indebted for assistance in regard to these facts, “In this posture of affairs the magistrates of Leyden, alarmed by the evils which were at work, besought Arminius to hold a conference with his colleagues of the University, before the Classis respecting those doctrines to which he objected, that the extent of his objections might be ascertained and made known. But this Arminius declined. In the same manner he treated one proposal after another—declining all explanation—either before a committee or before a Church Court. Now and then in Synod and Classis, and even by secular men, the attempt was made to move in the case, but Arminius was never ready, and had always insurmountable objections to every method proposed. It was evident that he wished to gain time in which his leaven might work to put off all decisive action until he should have such an opportunity of influencing leading minds in the country as eventually to prepare them to side with himself. Thus he went on, evading, postponing, concealing, shrinking from investigation and endeavouring in secret to throw odium upon the doctrines and their adherents, hoping thus gradually to diminish their power and ultimately to gain a majority in whatever Synod then might be called.
“It is a painful narrative,” says Dr Miller, “but may truly be affirmed to be the history of every heresy which has ever arisen in the Christian Church. When heresy arises in an Evangelical body it is never open and frank. It always begins by skulking and assuming a disguise. Its advocates, when together, boast of ‘advanced thought,’ of vast improvements, and congratulate one another on having gone greatly beyond the ‘old dead orthodoxy’ and the antiquated errors of our fathers; but when charged with deviations from the accepted faith they complain of the injustice of the accusation as they differ from it only in certain expressions, and indeed only in words. This has been the standing course of errorists ever since the apostolic age. They are almost never honest and candid as a party, in the avowal of their sentiments, until they gain strength enough to feel sure of some degree of popular support. Thus it was with Arius in the 4th Century, with Pelagius in the 5th Century, with Arminius and his companions in the 17th, with Amyraut, the father of modern New-Schoolism, who ruined the orthodoxy of the Huguenots of France, with Channing and the Unitarians of Massachusetts when the last century came in. These men denied their real tenets, evaded examination or inquiry, declaimed against their accusers as merciless bigots and heresy-hunters, and strove, as long as they could, to agree with their orthodox neighbours, until the time came, when, partly from inability to hold in any longer and partly because they felt strong enough to come out, they avowed their real opinions.
An illustration of the working of the same corruption has been furnished by a great denomination of our country during the last two decades of years, and while granting that the rank and file who follow their beck are innocent of wrong intention and are led by the plausible whispers of “progress” and “peace,” it is patent to all observation that the leaders of the so-called “Revision” are men of precisely the spirit just now depicted—as like to Arminius as Z is to Zed.
Finally, in the case of Arminius, as in the present juncture, there was a universal desire that a Council should settle it. From the Provinces of Holland there went up to the States General a petition that a National Synod should meet “for the purpose of “revising” the Belgic Confession and the Catechisms of the Church.” The Synod of South Holland took alarm at this, and begged the substitution of a less radical word in the place of “revising.” This attempt to call a National
Synod, through the influence of Arminius, failed, but he could not stave off the issue. Finally the nerve of the Church was aroused. Men like Gomarus, Voetius, Bogerman, and others threw off their cowardice, and a Synod embracing representatives from the whole Protestant world was convened, in the city of Dort, for the purpose of helping the Synod of Holland to cope with an evil now grown so formidable that it threatened, like the North Sea, to break in all her dykes.
Before that Synod, made up of Commissioners of the Church of Scotland, of Bishops of the Church of England, then Calvinistic, and of delegates from Germany, the Palatinate, Switzerland and France,* Arminius was summoned. A greater summons, however, awaited him. Agitation and horror of mind seized on the unhappy man in his 49th year. To it he succumbed. “In his last sickness,” says his friend and apologist, Bertius, “he was sometimes heard to groan, and sigh, and cry out, ‘Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and of contention to the whole earth. I have lent to no man on usury, nor have men lent to me on usury, yet every man doth curse me!'”
Such is the report of his friend. Those who opposed him did not hesitate, however, to apply to him those words of Zech. xi. 17 and xiv. 12—”Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! The sword shall be put upon his arm and upon his right eye; his arm shall be clean dried up and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.” “And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh shall consume away, while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.”* The death of Arminius is like many another interposition where enmity to the truth and to its supporters has been artful, concealed, wilful and virulent. God has a way of reaching the case which is beyond the circle of man’s ken or action. His providence all down the ages sets its solemn seal to this unalterable fiat: “The lip of truth shall be established for ever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.”
* The French delegates were prevented from attending by their Roman Catholic King.
* Hansen, “Reformed Church in the Netherlands.”
Christ’s All-Conquering Grace.
WHAT heart can conceive, or what tongue recount the daily, hourly triumphs of Christ’s all-conquering grace? We see scarcely a millionth part of what Jesus as a King on His throne is daily doing; and yet we see enough to know that He ever lives at God’s right hand, and lives to save and bless. What a crowd of needy petitioners every moment surrounds His throne! What urgent wants and woes to redress; what cutting griefs and sorrows to assuage; what broken hearts to bind up; what wounded consciences to heal; what countless prayers to hear; what earnest petitions to grant; what stubborn foes to subdue; what guilty fears to quell! What clemency, what kindness, what long-suffering, what compassion, what mercy, what love, and yet what power and authority does this Almighty Sovereign display! No circumstance is too trifling; no petitioner too insignificant; no case too hard; no difficulty too great; no suer too importunate; no beggar too ragged; no bankrupt too penniless; no debtor too insolvent, for Him not to notice and not to relieve. Sitting on His throne of grace, His all-seeing eye views all, His almighty hand grasps all, and His loving heart embraces all whom the Father gave Him by covenant, whom He Himself redeemed by His blood, and whom the blessed Spirit has quickened into life by His invincible power. The hopeless, the helpless, the outcasts whom no man careth for; the tossed with tempest and not comforted; the ready to perish; the mourners in Zion; the bereaved widow; the wailing orphan; the sick in body, and still more sick in heart; the racked with hourly pain; the fevered consumptive; the wrestler with death’s last struggle—O what crowds of pitiable objects surround His throne; and all needing a look from His eye, a word from His lips, a smile from His face, a touch from His hand. O could we but see what His grace is, what His grace has, what His grace does; and could we but feel more what it is doing in and for ourselves, we should have more exalted views of the reign of grace now exercised on high by Zion’s enthroned King.—J. C. Philpot.
If our future blessedness shall consist in being where He is and beholding of His glory, what better preparation can there be for it than in a constant previous contemplation of that glory in the revelation made in the gospel, unto this very end—that by a view of it we may be gradually transformed into the same glory?—Owen.