Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Life of James Arminius - Translator's Preface

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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THE name of Brandt is imperishably associated with the literature of Holland. Gerard Brandt, a Remonstrant (or Arminian) minister and professor at Amsterdam, published, in 1671, that great work, 'The History of the Reformation in the Low Countries', which has elicited very general admiration for the impartiality of its spirit, the nobility of its sentiments, and the valuable and soul-stirring character of many of its records.

This eminent historian and divine was the father of our biographer, Caspar Brandt, who was also a minister of the Remonstrants at Amsterdam. Caspar drew up that life of Arminius, a translation of which is presented in this volume, about the beginning of the 17th century; but died just as he was preparing to put it to the press. After several years' delay it was at last edited and published by his son, Gerard, at Amsterdam, in 1724, and republished, with annotations, by the ecclesiastical historian, Mosheim, in 1725.

That Caspar was no unworthy son of the eminent historian of the Belgic Reformation will sufficiently appear, we trust, from the following pages, even under the confessed disadvantages of translation. He has here developed some of the finest qualities of the biographer — great candour and charity; consummate judgment and taste in the selection of his materials; and scholarly execution in weaving them into a symmetrical whole.

Stirring incident in the life of a theologian is what no considerate reader will expect; and certain portions of this memoir, owing to the subjects treated, can hardly fail to be regarded by some as dry and abstruse; but no one can deny it, — what many ingenuous inquirers, we trust, will feel to be an unspeakable charm, — the merit of presenting a faithful and full-length portrait of the man Arminius, and no small insight into the state and spirit of his times. The name of Arminius stands identified with that gigantic recoil from Calvinism, than which no reaction in nature could have been more certainly predicted. Of all the actors in that movement, — so fertile of mighty actors, — no one played a more conspicuous, important, and trying part than Arminius.

To high talent and cultivation, and to consummate ability as a disputant, Arminius added the ornament of spotless Christian consistency (his enemies being judges), and of a singularly noble, manly, and benevolent nature. This, with his conspicuous position, made his personal influence to be very potent and extensive.

And yet few names have ever been overshadowed by a deeper and denser gloom of prejudice than his; to utter which, as Wesley remarked, was much the same, in some ears, as to raise the cry of 'mad dog.' This is attributable partly to the latitudinarianism of some of his followers, who, revolting at the dominant faith, and maddened by oppression, resiled to the opposite extreme; and partly by the accidental circumstance that his milder scheme found general favour in the Church of England, at a time when she stood in hostile relations to the English Puritans and the Scottish Presbyterians. But these were results with which neither the man Arminius, nor the Arminian principle of conditionalism, had anything whatever to do. To trace them to him were not more just than to trace German Neology to Luther and Melancthon, and Genevan Socinianism to Calvin.

That the early Arminians had some Erastian leanings, was less their fault than their fate. On this point, at least, their high-handed opponents have no room to speak. Very plausible, no doubt, was the clamour of the Gomarists to have ecclesiastical causes tried by ecclesiastical courts; and safe, as well as plausible, for they were the dominant party; but to ascribe this to any just principles of religious liberty would be to betray sheer ignorance of the men and the times. What the Gomarists wished was full scope, in the first place, for their high-handed majority, to condemn the Arminians in due ecclesiastical form; and then to demand from Caesar, for the plenary execution of their decrees, the unshackled use of the secular arm. Bogermann, the zealous foe of the Arminians, and the president of the Synod of Dort, by which the Arminians were condemned, was one of the translators of Beza's treatise of punishing heretics with death, and pressed the Dutch magistrates with the sentiment 'that to tolerate more religions than one in a state, was to make peace with Satan.' Though driven by their circumstances to seek shelter under the protective arm of the State, the Arminians were not the less the strenuous champions at once of civil and religious liberty; and to their heroic endurance is it owing that, from being one of the most exclusive, Holland land has become one of the most tolerant countries in Europe — a result in which a modern German writer recognises, not without reason, the fulfilment of a very important part of their mission. After the rupture between the great Arminian statesmen and Prince Maurice, to whose grasping ambition they refused to immolate the young liberties of the Dutch Republic, the Gomarists, seizing their opportunity, and postponing patriotism to party, paid court to the Prince, who forthwith turned his back on the Arminians, and threw all his weight into the opposite scale. This policy smoothed the way for the summary measures of the Synod of Dort, with its tragic issues to the Arminians, — deposition, suppression, expatriation, yea incarceration, and even death. Hundreds of clergymen were deposed. Multitudes who refused (though plied with the bribe of a comfortable maintenance) to abstain from preaching, were sent into exile. Even organists of churches were compelled to sign the canons of the Synod of Dort. The Leyden Professors of whatever faculty who refused to do so, were displaced; and recusant students expelled. Arminian assemblies, held in the face of pains and penalties were sometimes converted by a ruthless soldiery into scenes of blood. The self-denying persistence of the persecuted Arminians was worthy, so long as then-days of trial lasted, of our own forefathers in the days of the Covenant. The million guilders of the Synod's expenses were the least part of its cost to Holland. At the very time it closed its sittings, three great Arminian statesmen, whose names occur in this biography — Grotius, Hoogerbeets, and Oldenbarneveldt, were in prison; the two former being condemned to perpetual imprisonment; the last, who had already turned his period of threescore years and ten, was led forth, a few days after the close of the Synod, to expiate on the scaffold his only crime — incorruptible patriotism.

We allude to these facts, not for the invidious purpose of tracing the spirit of persecution exclusively to any one creed (though some creeds distil it more copiously than others), but partly to vindicate the original Arminians from exaggerated charges of Erastianism, as what their Gomarist opponents did much more to incur; and partly as appropriate supplemental information, as far as it goes, to that contained in the following memoir, which narrates the causes that ripened into the results described, ten years after Arminius had found an asylum in the grave.

The English Reformation, having for its doctrinal basis the mild views of Melancthon, Arminianism (which was a virtual revolt from Calvin to Melancthon) has all along powerfully influenced the theology of England. And yet, beyond the old translation (in 1672) of Bertius's funeral oration over Arminius, and brief gleanings from this memoir in our larger works of reference, we know of no English Life of the great Arminius, till, with a zeal, ability, and erudition worthy of his great theme, Mr James Nichols of London addressed himself to the task in the memoir prefixed to the first volume of his translation of the works of Arminius. The present translation of Brandt was nearly completed before we laid our hands on the two volumes of Mr Nichols (for the third is still due); but on doing so, we found, as we expected, that his task and ours in no way interfered. Our object was to meet the prejudice (especially in Scotland) associated with the name of Arminius, by a translation of the classic and authentic memoir by Brandt, in a form which, while tasteful, should be of a price to make it accessible to the masses of the people. Now, Mr Nichols's Life of Arminius forms part of a large and necessarily expensive work, which is not yet completed; and though Brandt's Memoir is incorporated, it is in a dislocated form, in scattered notes and appendices, while considerable portions are omitted, or reserved for the third volume. In 1843 Dr Bangs of New York, compiled from the pages of Nichols, a Life of Arminius in a form better adapted to the popular object we had in view; but being professedly but a miniature of Nichols's, it partakes of the same heterogeneous and fragmentary character; containing portions, indeed, of Brandt, but portions also from other sources, including large extracts from the works of Arminius. A simple and continuous edition of Brandt's Life of Arminius was yet wanting; and this, without interference with the respected authors named, and as a fellow-worker in the same cause, we have endeavoured to supply in the present publication.

Of the manner in which we have executed our task we leave the public to judge; merely observing, that while labouring throughout to harmonise, to the best of our judgment, these sometimes refractory compatibilities — fidelity to our author's Latin, on the one hand, and to our reader's vernacular on the other, we have allowed the scale to preponderate, where preponderate it must, on the side of literality rather than of elegance. Our object in this publication is something more than a vindication of the injured character of Arminius.

Were all such wrongs to be thus righted, 'I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.' There are multitudes of injured characters which, for any practical requirement, can well afford to lie over (as Whitefield said of his) till they be cleared up in the light of the Judgment Day. But there are other characters, — other transacted lives, — which not to know, or to misknow, is a loss to the world. Of such sort we believe the memory of Arminius to be: a memory so beautiful that even those who are constrained to dissent from Arminius the theologian, may yet profitably contemplate, and sympathetically admire, Arminius the nobleminded, benevolent, and Christian man. For this and such ends, may God graciously accompany this little work with his blessing.

JOHN GUTHRIE.
GREENOCK, 20th Sept., 1854.

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