CHAPTER IV LAST YEARS OF ARMINIUS THE year 1607 was marked by increased zeal for the Reformed Faith among the opponents of Arminius, who began to consider that he was tampering with the very foundations of their system. Warnings were sent out to sister Churches in France and Scotland, in which more fervour than accuracy was displayed. There is little wonder that little unanimity was shown in a meeting that was held in May to prepare for the muchdiscussed National Synod. The most famous leader of . French Protestantism in those days was Du-PlessisMornay, the Governor of Saumur. After the perversion of Henry of Navarre the friendship of the King for Mornay declined, but the latter made of Saumur not only a Protestant stronghold but the home of a theological college. To his death in 1623 he maintained a deep interest in all doctrinal questions, and was himself the author of important religious treatises. A letter of his dated January 1st, 1607, to Daniel Tilenus, the Professor of Theology at Sedan, declares that he has heard many people praise Arminius and expresses the wish that all Protestants could keep strictly to the use of scriptural phraseology and combine together against Romish idolatry, superstition and tyranny. A sober theologian will treat the great mysteries of the faith circumspectly. Arminius himself would have been the first to agree to these conditions, and if the leaders of orthodoxy in the Dutch Reformed Church had been baptized into the spirit of Mornay the cleavage might never have occurred. It is, however, clear that echoes of the disputes in the Leiden Academy had been heard in the sister Churches, and the possibility of infection was already being dis1 Epist. Præst. Vir., No. 97; Vita, pp. 299, 300. cussed. The private and public disputations went steadily forward in the class-room of Arminius, and at his home, and the subject of his elaborate expositions seems at this time to have been the Gospel according to St. Matthew. In successive letters to Wtenbogaert we find him discussing problems suggested by that study, on February 3rd on Peter's confession in Matt. xvi, and on February 9th from the fig-tree of Matt. xxiv, 32 ff.1 From the first letter we get some notion of the length of theological lectures in the seventeenth century. He reads till 9.30 a.m., meets his class at 10 a.m., and continues in exposition till 1.30 p.m.; the second session lasts from 4 to 7.30. There is little time left for correspondence. A proposal was on foot to call Wtenbogaert back to Utrecht, which Arminius hoped would not succeed. He was not disappointed. Work and a severe cold prevented him from going over to the Hague to see Wtenbogaert, The reports of his cough became chronic from this time onwards. He seems to have had some foreboding that he was not destined to live long. In the spring he lost unexpectedly an old friend by the death of Halsbergius of Amsterdam. A letter written at the time expresses the idea that he may follow him after not many years. 2 As to his scriptural interpretation, it is as elaborately careful as ever, in spite of his health. He compares passage with passage to learn the exact sense. "I do not toil in exploring dubious phrases, which are as likely to mean one thing as another, nor if they nearly carry one significance do I go out of my way to show how another meaning could serve the purpose." The contemporary expositor who never got to the bottom of his subject before he had reached his "fiftiethly " knew the art of creating difficulties in order to remove them. Arminius is content to show that Peter shared the common hope that Jesus was a temporal Messiah, and that the fulfilment of the Lord's eternal and kingly 1 Epist. Præst. Vir., No. 98. 2 Vita, p. 302; Epist. Præst. Vir., No. 101. priesthood did not occur until Pentecost. He was anointed during the days of His flesh to a prophetic office, and His kingly and priestly functions had been chiefly disclosed before the retirement to Cæsarea Philippi in sending out the Apostles on their mission. The treatment of the difficult subject of the Second Advent is equally sane. Arminius is a common-sense commentator of the school of Calvin, who will not go beyond the meaning of his text by one jot or tittle. At the end of February the deputies of the Synods of North and South Holland asked the States-General to call a preparatory conference for the National Synod. This was agreed to and summoned for May 22nd.1 The meeting-place was the Hague, and there duly arrived there the three professors and thirteen ministers who had been summoned to represent the different States of the Republic. The professors were Arminius, Gomarus and Sibrandus Lubbertus of Franeker. Of the preachers the best known were Wtenbogaert, Helmichius of Amsterdam and Bogerman of Leeuwarden, who was to achieve notoriety later as president of the Synod of Dort. The full complement of seventeen was made up by the arrival of the Overyssel delegate on the 29th. He had little reason to hurry, as the arrival of Whitsuntide delayed the meetings for four days, and it was not until noon on the 26th that business really began. They were welcomed by Holland's greatest statesman, John of Oldenbarnevelt, who was strongly of the opinion that this was no time for theological hairsplitting. The country was exhausted by the long war, and was at that time specially feeling the financial strain. He was already beginning to consider the prospects of an honourable peace with Spain. Needless to say, nothing of this appeared in his opening speech to the ecclesiastics. He explained the reason for their meeting and asked that minority and majority reports should be presented in writing if there were any differ 1 Vita, p. 302; Rogge, Joh. Wten., I, 289; 2 Vita, p. 303; Brandt, Hist. of Ref., II, 41; 290; Hist. Introd. to Acts of Synod of Dort. Hist. of Ref., II, 40-41. ences of opinion between them.1 Eight questions were submitted to the deputies as to the composition of the National Synod, the time and place of meeting and the basis of their discussions. On several points there was general agreement. The Synod should be held as early in 1608 as possible, Utrecht was the most convenient centre and each Provincial Synod should send four ministers and two elders. The Professors of Theology should also be members of the gathering, and learned and devout laymen might be delegated even though they were not members. The States-General should be asked to send delegates to preside, and ministers should be allowed to attend as at other Synod gatherings. So far there was little divergence of view, but on the other questions there was a clear-cut division. The deputies from Friesland had been given secret instructions to oppose any revision of the Catechism, and Sibrandus Lubbertus had been deputed to take up a similar attitude to the objectionable clause in which this was named. Indeed the extremists were prepared to refuse to attend if this was insisted on. Three questions aroused warm discussions, and Wtenbogaert and Arminius, with the two delegates from Utrecht, found themselves in a minority of four against a solid phalanx of thirteen. The subjects in dispute were the question of the revision of the symbols and the rights of minorities. On the latter subject Arminius argued that it was impossible to decide beliefs by proxy; therefore doctrinal subjects should be referred back to the whole ministry of the Church, and not decided by a little group of representatives.3 It is difficult to see how a plebiscite of the ministry could have given a more judicious and more peace-provoking answer to the difficult questions in controversy than the picked representatives of the Church were able to give. There seems to have been no precedent for such a suggestion, and there is little wonder that it was rejected. More consideration was given to 1 Rogge, Joh. Wten., p. 291; Trigland, p. 356. a suggestion that when marked differences occurred the matter should be referred back to the Provincial Synods. A series of recesses with constant reference to the provincial courts would have been very difficult in practice, but the rights of the separate provinces were so strongly entrenched that it was impossible to refuse this suggestion in principle. In each case the Synod should determine the procedure.1 These were the somewhat futile attempts made by Arminius and his party to safeguard the rights of the minority. The real battle raged round the question of the revision of the Catechism and Confession. In the official account prefacing the Acts of the Synod of Dort, it is declared that the decision was that the Holy Scriptures alone should be the rule of judgment in doctrine and morals. This was universally accepted by Protestants, and was readily agreed to by Arminius and his friends; for that very reason it was discussed as though some slight were therefore suggested on the value of the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession, which had been approved by so many honoured leaders and attested by the blood of so many thousands of martyrs.2 The discussion moved on to the objectionable clause in the Summons of the States-General about the possible revision of the symbols of faith, and the two questions were discussed together. Gomarus declared that the Scriptures were the primary rule of faith, but that the belief formulæ were a secondary rule. Bogerman went so far as to say repeatedly that the Scriptures must be interpreted according to the Catechism and the Confession. This was without question putting human documents above the Holy Scriptures, and thereby not only destroying the foundation principle of the Reformation but actually contradicting the 7th Article of the Confession. As Arminius put it later to Wtenbo1 Rogge, Joh. Wten., I, 295; Trigland, pp. 362, 363. 2 Vita, p. 311. 3 Ibid., pp. 311, 312; Rogge, Joh. Wten., I, 294. 4 Vinke, Libri Symbolici, etc., pp. 80, 81: "Men mach ooc gheniger menschen schriften, hoe heylich sy gheweest sijn, ghelijcken by de Godlicke Schrifturen." |