Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/614

552 pastor. He was commissioned to organise the educational system of the city, and is said to have done it well. He greatly distinguished himself by fidelity to duty during a plague that devastated Amsterdam in 1C02. In 1603 he was called to a theological professorship at Leyden, which he held till his death in 1(309. Arminius is best known as the founder of the anti-Calvin- istic school in Reformed theology, which created the Remonstrant Church in Holland (see, and contributed to form the Arminian tendency or party in England. He was a man of mild and liberal spirit, broadened by varied culture, constitutionally averse to narrow views and enforced uniformity. He lived in a period of severe systematisiug. The Reformed strengthened itself against the Roman Catholic theology by working itself, on the one hand, into vigorous logical consistency, and supporting itself, on the other, on the supreme authority of the Scriptures. Calvin s first principle, the absolute sovereignty of God, had been so applied as to make the divine decree determine alike the acts and the destinies of men ; and his formal principle had been so construed as to invest his system with the authority of the source whence it professed to have been drawn. Calvinism had become, towards the close of the IGth century, supreme in Holland, but the very rigour of the uniformity it exacted provoked a reaction. Richard Koornhert could not plead for the toleration of heretics without assailing the dominant Calvinism, and so he opposed a conditional to its unconditional predestination. The two ministers of Delft, who had debated the point with him, had, the better to turn his arguments, descended from the supralapsarian to the infralapsarian position, i.e., made the divine decree, instead of precede and determine, succeed the fall. This seemed to the high Calvinists of Holland a grave heresy. Arminius, fresh from Geneva, familiar with the dialectics of Beza, appeared to many the man able to speak the needed word, and so, in 1589, he was simultaneously invited by the ecclesiastical court of Amsterdam to refute Koornhert, and by Martin Lydius, professor at Franeker, to combat the two infralapsarian ministers of Delft. Thus led to confront the questions of necessity and free will, his own mind became unsettled, with the result, that the further he pursued his inquiries the more he was inclined to assert the freedom of man and limit the range of the unconditional decrees of God. This change in doctrinal belief became gradually more apparent in his preaching and in his private conferences with his clerical associates, and occasioned much controversy in the ecclesiastical courts. The controversy was greatly embittered, and the differences correspondingly sharpened, by his appointment to the professorship at Leyden. He had as colleague Francis Gomarus, a strong supralapsarian, perfervid, irrepressible; and their collisions, personal, official, political, tended to develop and define their respective positions. Arminius died, worn out by uncongenial controversy, before his system had been elaborated into the logical consistency it attained in the hands of his celebrated successor, Simon Episcopus, but though inchoate in detail, it was in its principles clear and coherent enough. These may be thus stated:— 1. The decree of God is, when it concerns His own actions, absolute, but when it concerns man s, conditional, i.e., the decree relative to the Saviour to be appointed and the salvation to be provided is absolute, but the decree relative to the persons saved or condemned is made to depend on the acts belief and repentance in the one case, unbelief and impenitence in the other of the persons themselves. 2. The providence or government of God while sovereign, is exercised in harmony with the nature of the creatures governed, i.e., the sovereignty of God is so exercised as to be compatible with the freedom of man. 3. Man is by original nature, through the assistance of divine grace, free, able to will and perform the right ; but is in his fallen state, of and by himself, unable to do so ; needs to be regenerated in all his powers before he can do what is good and pleasing to God. 4. Divine grace originates, maintains, and perfects all the good in man, so much so that he cannot, though rege nerate, conceive, will, or do any good thing without it. 5. The saints possess, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, sufficient strength to persevere to the end in spite of sin and the flesh, but may so decline from sound doctrine as to cause divine grace to be ineffectual. 6. Every believer may be certain or assured of his own salvation. 7. It is possible for a regenerate man to live without sin. Arminius s works are mostly occasional treatises drawn from him by controversial emergencies, but they everywhere exhibit a calm, well-furnished, undogmatic, and progressive mind. Characteristic are such sayings as these in letters to his friend, Uitenbogaert : &quot;Truth, even theological truth, has been sunk in a deep well, whence it cannot be drawn forth without much effort.&quot; &quot; I should be foolish were I to concede to any one so much of right in me, as that he should be able to disturb me as often as he had a mind. Be this my brazen wall, a conscience void of offence. Forward let me still go in my search after truth, and therein let me die with the good God on my side, even if I must needs incur the hatred and ill-will of the whole world. &quot; He was essentially an amiable man, who hated the zeal for an impossible orthodoxy that constrained &quot;the church to institute a search after crimes which have not betrayed an existence, yea, and to drag into open conten tions those who are meditating no evil.&quot; His friend Peter Bertius, who pronounced his funeral oration, closed it with these words, &quot;There lived a man whom it was not pos sible for those who knew him sufficiently to esteem ; those who entertained no esteem for him are such as never knew him well enough to appreciate his merits.&quot;

1em  ARMISTICE, a temporary suspension of hostilities by mutual agreement between two nations at war, or their respective forces. An armistice may be either general or particular : in the first case, there is a complete cessation of hostile operations in every part of the dominions of the belligerent powers ; in the second, there is merely a temporary truce between two contending armies, or between a besieged fortress and the force besieging it. A general armistice cannot be concluded by the commanders-in-chief unless special authority has been previously delegated to them by their respective governments ; otherwise, any arrangement entered into by them requires subsequent ratification by the supreme powers of the states. A partial truce may be concluded by the officers of the respective powers, without any special authority from their governments, wherever, from the nature and extent of the commands they exercise, their duties could not be efficiently discharged without their possession of such a power. The conduct of belligerent parties during an armistice is regulated by the following general conditions, which, however, may be set aside by special agreement :(!.) Each party may do, within the limits prescribed by the truce, whatever he could have done in time of peace. For