Chapter 2 Part 1

The Life of James Arminius
Chapter 2, Part 1 of 3.

This biography of James Arminius was written in Latin by Caspar Brandt, published by Gerard Brandt in 1724, and translated to English by John Guthrie in 1854.
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CHAPTER II.
TRANSITION-STAGE OF ARMINIUS' MIND ON THE SUBJECT OF PREDESTINATION, WITH THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH IT ORIGINATED, AND THE TROUBLES TO WHICH IT LED. -A.D. 1589-1592.

FAMOUS at that time was the name of Richard Coornhert, a citizen of Amsterdam, whom Adrian Junius of Hoorn, in his description of Holland, designates 'a man of divine intellect.' This individual, notwithstanding that he had strenuously contended for liberty of country and of conscience, and bravely withstood the tyranny of the Romish Church, was yet of opinion that the church which gloried in the name Reformed, was not so purged but that it still laboured under a variety of errors, opposed at once to Christian truth and piety. Of these, the one he could least tolerate was the dogma, taught by most ministers of this church, of an absolute decree of divine election and reprobation, as had been maintained at large by the very celebrated divines of the Geneva school. This opinion he began to assail both with tongue and pen; and soon furnished the pastors in the Low Countries that held it with a superabundance of work. Nay, ten years had now elapsed since a very smart disputation on this and other points, presided over by certain members of the honourable the States General, had taken place between him and Arnold Cornelis and Reyner Donteklok, ministers at Delft [Vid. Parentis mei f. m. Ger. Brantii Hist. Reformationis Belgicae, populari Idiom. Scriptam. tom. i. p. 597.]. He was, in consequence, taxed and held chargeable with heresy, libertinism, and many more such crimes; and stood as a common mark of assault to all who wished to preserve inviolate the name and reputation of the Reformed Church. The Ecclesiastical Court of Amsterdam accordingly, unwilling in this matter to fall behind others in zeal, resolved that their own Arminius be earnestly requested to undertake the task of resisting that man's attempts, and devote his energies to the confutation of his treatises [Ex actis Presbyt. Amstel.]. This request Arminius at that time failed to fulfil, not so much from a reluctant mind, as from the following incident that occurred in the same conjuncture of affairs.

These two ministers of Delft, who had publicly disputed with Coornhert, the better to shield their opinion of an absolute decree against the main objection of their antagonist, with which he was always plying them — (namely, that the necessity of sinning, no less than of perishing, being fixed by the more than iron absolutism of that decree, they thereby actually made the ever-blessed God the author of all sin)— came to the conclusion that they must of necessity deviate a little from the footsteps of the Genevan divines, and adopt some other expedient to rid themselves of the difficulty. For while they agreed with the Genevans in this, that Divine Predestination was the antecedent, absolute, and inevitable decree of God concerning the salvation or damnation of every individual of the human race, without any respect to obedience or disobedience, they nevertheless dissented from them in the following particular: — While the illustrious Beza and others had made the object in the view of God predestinating to be man not yet considered as fallen, yea, not even as created, these Delft divines, on the other hand, made this peremptory decree, in the order of nature, to be posterior to the creation and the fall of man. In order to submit this opinion to the judgment of the most learned, these brethren of Delft had drawn up a little work under the title of 'An Answer to certain Arguments of Beza and Calvin, from a Treatise on Predestination as taught in the Ninth Chapter of Romans.' [Ex Bert. Orat. Funeb. Vide etiam libellum B. Donteklokii vernacule Script. anno 1609.]. This work, presenting a variety of difficulties under which the more rigid opinion of the Genevans seemed to labour, had been transmitted by them to the Reverend Martin Lydius, who, from the celebrity he had acquired for solid erudition, had been called, in the year 1585, by the honourable rulers of Friesland to the professorship of divinity in their new academy. But he, though by no means indisposed to reply to the authors of that book — (he had even pledged his faith that he would) — nevertheless preferred turning to Arminius, whom he urged by letter to undertake this task, and the defence of Beza, and thus pave the way to the refutation of Coornhert.

To this proposal Arminius, in the first instance, did not greatly object, yea, and addressed himself to the task with the more alacrity that he cherished such veneration for his reverend and aged preceptor, of whose lectures and arguments, to which he had recently listened, he retained a deep and lively recollection. But when he entered on this field, and, with the view of defending his own opinion, had accurately balanced the arguments on both sides, and brought them to the test of the ancient truth, he found in either view of an absolute decree of predestination such inextricable difficulties, that what to choose and what to refuse came to be matter of perplexing doubt. Indeed, the longer he revolved the point, and weighed the reasons which had been urged against the view of Calvin and Beza, the more difficult did he find it to meet them with a solid reply; and thus he felt himself bearing rapidly over to that very opinion which, at first sight, he had undertaken to impugn. Wherefore, accustomed as he was to surrender himself to the dictates of a good conscience, that he might not overstep his duty as a lawful student of divine truth, or rashly precipitate himself against this or that opinion on the point referred to, he determined, first of all, abruptly to cut short the thread of the refutation he had begun, and devote every fragment of time he could redeem from his stated engagements and public ministrations to the more thorough investigation of this doctrine, and to the perusal, in connexion with the sacred volume, of the works written on the subject by the ancient as well as more recent divines.

But to proceed with our narrative: That he might feel the more encouraged to prosecute with alacrity and respectability his earthly career, and the public duties assigned him, he took thought, in the thirtieth year of his age, of entering into the marriage relation; and on the 16th of September 1590, he took to wife Elizabeth Real, the nuptials being celebrated in due form in the Old Church (as it was commonly called), and the ceremony performed by his colleague, the Rev. John Ambrosius. This Elizabeth was a woman of elegant manners, and of a great mind — being the daughter of a man of the utmost weight and tried excellence, Lawrence Real, a judge and senator in Amsterdam. How well this man deserved of his native city, and of the Reformed religion, and how prodigious the toils he encountered in its defence during the very perilous period of Spanish tyranny, eminent writers of that age abundantly testify. Having happily secured as his partner in life the daughter of such a man, endowed and adorned with hereditary virtues, most exemplary manners, and the love of unaffected piety from her earliest years — for she had herself accompanied her father into exile for the sake of religion — Arminius forthwith applied himself, heart and soul, to discharge with alacrity the duties of his sphere.