Arminius Jacobus

Arminius, Jacobus (Germ. Hermannsen), the founder of the Arminian school or sect, was born at Yssel, Holland, in 1560. He studied at Utrecht, Marburg, Leyden, and Geneva, having at the latter place the rigid Calvinist, Theodore Beza, for his instructor. He returned to Holland with a high reputation for learning, and was appointed in 1588 one of the city preachers at Amsterdam. Calvinists were then divided by the disputes between Supralapsarians, or strict Calvinists, who believed that the scheme of redemption and election was ordained from the Creation, and Sublapsarians or Remonstrants, who held that it only came into existence after Adam's fall. Arminius was engaged to refute this latter view, but was gradually converted to it. In 1603 he was appointed Professor of Theology at Leyden, and his orthodoxy was at once called into question by one of his colleagues, Gomar. The controversy agitated the whole Church, and was still raging when Arminius died in l609. The Synod of Dort in 1619 condemned the doctrine of the Remonstrants as savouring of Pelagianism and tending towards Romanism. Two hundred clergy left the Dutch Calvinistic Church in consequence of this decision.