gation of penances, and with the denial of purgatory, there was no room left for indulgences or for absolution, considered as a judicial act of the priest. Absolution, where it was retained by the Protestants, was a declaration of the forgiveness of the Gospel, not to an individual by himself, but to the assembly of believers, and was founded on a general, not a detailed, on a common, not an auricular or private confession of sin.

Of the theological divisions among the Protestants, the earliest and most noteworthy was the Sacramentarian controversy between the Lutherans on the one hand, and the Zwinglians first, and then the Calvinists, on the other; the controversy that raged in the first age of the Reformation. This has been described in preceding pages. The Arminian controversy, which is, perhaps, next in importance, related to the subject of predestination, and arose towards the close of the sixteenth century. The Reformers had followed Augustine in the assertion of unconditional predestination and election, which they assumed to be the correlate of salvation by grace alone. By Beza, the pupil of Calvin, who succeeded him at Geneva, this doctrine was taught in the extreme, or what was called the supra-lapsarian form. Calvin, to say the least, had not uniformly inculcated this phase of the doctrine, according to which the first sin of man is the object of an efficient decree; the salvation of some and the condemnation of others being the supreme end in reference to which all the rest of the divine decrees are subordinate. But this type of doctrine spread extensively in the Reformed or Calvinistic branch of the Protestant Church. The followers of Melancthon adopted the doctrine of conditional predestination, in the room of the Augustinian view, and the Lutherans at length practically acquiesced in the same opinion. In Holland, therefore, where the Lutheran teaching was early introduced, there had been, before the time of Arminius, more or less dissent from

THE SYSTEM OF ARMINIUS.

473

the Calvinistic dogma. But this dissent first acquired strength through his influence. James Arminius, born at Oudewater, in 1560, was one of the most learned and accomplished theologians of his age. He studied at the University of Leyden, but received his education principally at Geneva, where he was under the instruction of Beza. After travelling in Italy, he returned to his native country, and in 1603 became Professor of Theology at Leyden, and a colleague of Gomarus, a strenuous advocate of the supra-lapsarian theory. This view Arminius had been called upon to defend against the preachers of Delft, who had avowed their adhesion to the milder, or infra-lapsarian form of the doctrine, according to which election has respect to men already fallen into a state of sin. But in the examination of the subject, into which Arminius was thus led, he came to sympathize with the opinion which he was set to oppose, and at length to go beyond it, and reject unconditional election altogether. In short, he gave up what had come to be considered the characteristic dogma of Calvinism. A dispute arose between him and Gomarus, and the debate spread through Holland. Episcopius, the learned successor of Arminius at Leyden, and Uytenbogaert, who had been a fellowpupil of the former at Geneva, became the leaders of the party which the movement of Arminius had called into being. The main peculiarities of their creed were contained in the Remonstrance · which gave the name of Remonstrants to the party. that was addressed to the states of Holland and West Friesland in 1610. document embraces five points, namely, Election based on the foreknowledge of faith, universal Atonement, in the room of Atonement made for the elect only, the resistibility of Grace, in connection with the need of Regeneration by the Spirit, and the doubtfulness of the Calvinistic tenet of the perseverance of all believers.

This

A great political line of division was also run between

the two theological parties. The Arminians were Republicans, and in favor of a closer union of Church and State, or a partial control of the State over the Church. The Calvinists adhered to the house of Orange, and were for the independence of the Church in relation to the State. In the progress of the conflict, Olden Barneveldt was beheaded, and Grotius, the illustrious ornament of the Arminian party, was banished. The Synod of Dort was assembled, in 1616, for the purpose of giving judgment upon this theological controversy. While this Synod declined to give an express sanction to the supra-lapsarian views of Gomarus, it declared its judgment in opposition to the Arminians, on all the characteristic points of their system, and put forth, by way of antithesis, what have been called the five points of high Calvinism: unconditional election; limited atonement (designed for the elect alone); the complete impotency of the fallen will; irresistible grace; and the perseverance of believers. The Arminians introduced into their theology other deviations from the current system. In particular, they modified the accepted doctrine of Original Sin, excluding native guilt in the literal and proper sense of the term; and through the celebrated treatise of Grotius in answer to Socinus, and in the writings of other eminent theologians of the party, they substituted for the Anselmic doctrine of the Atonement what has been termed the governmental view. The Arminian party, from the out

1 Grotius meets the objections of Socinus by denying that atonement or satisfaction is the payment of a debt. The ruler is at liberty to pardon, provided public order is not endangered. The end of punishment is the prevention of future transgressions, or the security of the commonwealth. The death of Christ, in its moral effect, as a means to this end, is equivalent to the legal penalty; since it equally manifests God's hatred of sin. Hence it permits the ruler to pardon, on such conditions as he may judge it wise to impose. The seeds of the Grotian doctrine are in the Scotist theology, which affirmed that the atonement is not intrinsically the equivalent of the penalty, but takes its place by the divine acceptance or consent (acceptilatio); though Grotius, on verbal and technical grounds, repudiates this term. Defensio Fidei Cathol. de Satisfactione Christi adv. F. Socinum (1617). Grotii Opera, iv. 297.

THE ANABAPTISTS.

475 set, cultivated Biblical studies with an earnest, scholarly spirit, and made important contributions in this branch of theological science. They were marked, partly as a natural consequence of the position of their party and of the persecution to which they were subject, by a liberal and tolerant disposition. They were in favor of reducing the doctrinal tests at the foundation of Christian union, to the briefest possible compass. Indeed, a comparative indifference in respect to creeds, or a low estimate of their value, was one of their characteristic traits. The Arminian theology, besides the progress which it made in the country where it had its origin, by degrees supplanted Calvinism, for the most part, in the English Episcopal Church. It was adopted substantially by John Wesley, the principal founder of Methodism, and in this way won a numerous and powerful body of adherents.

In the ferment of thought and discussion which was produced by the Protestant movement, a new impetus, as well as liberty, was given to speculation. Slumbering tendencies of opinion were awakened to fresh life, and new sects sprang up, which were equally dissatisfied with the old Church and with the position taken by the Reformers.

Among the advocates of more radical changes who considered that the Protestant leaders had stopped halfway in their work, is that numerous and widely scattered class, which comprehended under itself many subordinate divisions, but which was known by the name of Anabaptists. They received this title from their rejection, in common, of the baptism of infants, and from their insisting that those who joined them should be baptized anew. One prevailing feature of their system was a belief in immediate or prophetic inspiration, which, if it did not supersede the written Word, assimilated them to its au

1 Erbkam, Geschichte d. prot. Sekten im. Zeitalt. d. Ref. (1848). Dorner, Hist. of Prot. Theology, i. 125.

thors. This was the position of the prophets who stirred up the commotion at Wittenberg, while Luther was at the Wartburg, and who gained over Carlstadt to their cause. One consequence of this form of enthusiasm was a contempt for human learning and for study. The immediate teaching of the Spirit renders the laborious exertions of the intellect superfluous. Another of their tenets was a belief in the visible kingdom of Christ, which was to be erected on the ruins of Church and State. In some cases they held that temporal rule belongs to the saints alone, and carried out their fanatical theory by seizing on the city of Münster and dispossessing the magistrates. Sometimes their conduct was marked by an ascetic morality, and sometimes by licentious maxims and practices; opposite phenomena which freqently coexist in sects of this nature. They appear to have generally held a peculiar notion about the Incarnation; that the body of Christ is not formed from that of the Virgin, is different from the flesh and blood of other men, and was deified at the Ascension. Such a doctrine was held by Jean Boucher, who was put to death in England, after being examined by Cranmer. Such was the opinion also of the mystic, Caspar Schwenkfeld, a German nobleman of pious and zealous character, a leader of one of the most worthy of the Anabaptist sects, who died not far from 1561. It was in Holland that the Anabaptists were most numerous. Many of them were guilty of extravagances which afforded a fair pretext, though no just apology, for treating them with extreme severity. After the disturbances connected with the seizure of Münster, the more sober class of Anabaptists found a leader in the person of Menno, who travelled from place to place, and organized them into churches. They were a simple and honest people, aiming to shape their lives according to the precepts of the Bible, discarding infant baptism, the oath, and the use of arms; admitting that civil magistrates are necessary in the pres