Remonstrant party been triumphant, an Arminian synod would have been equally tyrannical, makes the following remark: "But that, in the course of this dispute, exasperation carried a part of the council, in particular the moderator, Bogerman, and also Gomar, Scultet, and several others; indeed, one may say, the Hollandic divines in general, and those of Geneva, much beyond the bounds of Christian moderation, propriety, and decorum, in their deportment and words, with respect to the Remonstrants, can never be doubted by any one who now peruses their own records. I need not say that the accounts of the Remonstrant party are still more unfavorable." Such was the character of the trial; we may next look to the sentence. The synod formally pronounced condemnation upon Episcopius and his fellows, and the States-General soon confirmed the sentence. They were suspended from their offices, and required to sign an act of cessation from ministerial and pastoral duties, and from inculcating their sentiments. Upon their refusing to do this, banishment was pronounced upon them. The same terms were held to all the Remonstrant ministers of Holland. Subscription to the canons of Dort, or immediate deposition was the alternative. The melancholy detail is given by Mr. Calder at full length, and to those who are fond of the tragic, this narrative of Calvinistic proscription, violence, and bloodshed, may possess some melancholy interest; but to most humane hearts, it will, no doubt, be a dreary chapter. We trust it will not be read as a textuary of reproach against men of milder principles and humaner hearts than the ancient admirers of the canons of Dort, but as a lesson in the melancholy volume of human nature, and as an appalling representation of what persecution is, whether Papal or Protestant, Calvinian or Arminian. "No good man can read it,”—says the translator of Brandt's history of these transactions-and may his words ever prove true," without abhorring arbitrary power and all manner of persecution."

Episcopius and his brethren took refuge in Walwick, in Brabant, where they were received with a kindness from foreigners and Catholics strongly contrasted with the severe treatment they received from their fellow countrymen and brother Protestants. While in banishment, successively at Walwick, Antwerp, and Paris, his pen was active in defence of his principles. The great mass of his voluminous works were written subsequent to his condemnation at Dort.

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But persecutors as well as prophets do not live for ever. rice dying, his brother succeeded to the stadtholdership and was,so far as circumstances would allow, not unfavorably disposed to the Remonstrants, and Episcopius began to project the design of returning to his native land. He at length left Paris, and arrived at Rotterdam, where he was again received, after some years of absence, to his native land and the bosom of his friends with affectionate joy. The opponents who were no longer able to touch his life or liberties, were active with their publications against his character and principles. There he met with masterly and sometimes with severe replies, The stadtholder at length so evidently connived at the success of the Remonstrants, that they proceeded to repair their desolations. Rotterdam, the strong hold of Arminianism, chose

Episcopius as its minister. The Remonstrants were next emboldened to erect a theological institution, with Episcopius of course at the head of the theological department. After the reluctant consent of his friends at Rotterdam was obtained to give him up for the purpose, he assumed the professorship, and in the duties of this office, and in the publication of several able productions, he employed the brief remainder of his useful life.

We have given this hasty sketch, not for the purpose of satisfying, but with the hope, perhaps a vain one, of exciting our readers to a perusal of the work, and a better acquaintance with the man. Mr. Calder's biography is characterized by research, and, we believe, accuracy. It is instructive in its facts, interspersed with incidents and anecdotes of thrilling or humorous interest, and varied with several important episodes. Subordinate to the main and nobly prominent character, Episcopius, there appear several attendant personages of varied degrees of interest. We have the sleek duplicity of Festus Hommius, the high-toned impetuosity of President Bogerman, and the tragic downfall of Barneveldt. Mr. Calder has a style of grave simplicity, and manly straight-forwardness not overcharged with excitement, wanting perhaps sometimes in finish, and by no means possessing that overstrained passion for the intense which characterizes the authors of what has been called the convulsive school.

It is a remarkable fact that Episcopius, conscious as he was of his own integrity of character, and the deep wrongs which in the course of his life he had suffered, expected little reparation to his fame from the justice of history. "My want of confidence in these writers," said he, speaking of ancient ecclesiastical historians, "partly arises from the conduct of some who bear that name at the present day. Let me go to our own history as a people. Although the proceedings adopted against us, and the character of the persons who have so injured our reputation, and occasioned our present exile and sufferings, are well known, yet what has not been said and written to vindicate them and defame us, by persons who are called modern historians? Take, for instance, the case of Baudartius, whose pages are foully stained with malevolence, and who may justly be designated any thing but an historian. And what has not that foolish Hessian, Daniel Angelocrator, written respecting the events that have taken place in Holland, in his book concerning the Synod of Dort? And although his work abounds with absurd and foolish statements, and his assertions are so grossly false, that it may with strict justice be considered as only entitled to be ranked with Grecian fable; yet, with the above facts, and the advantage of the course of time, a person might take these as the ground of confidence in the veracity of this writer. And I am bold to say that, after the lapse of a certain period, such will be the arguments set up in its favor; and thus its fictitious statements will be quoted as exhibiting matters of real history."

How truly this presentiment was invested with the accuracy of prophecy-how generally, not only predestinarians, but even their opponents, have associated with the name of Arminius and Episcopius the idea of low orthodoxy and dubious piety, it is unnecessary for us to describe. John Goodwin remarks that, in his time,

"the cross of Arminius is grown so heavy among us, and the generality of professors so weak, that the greater part of them are not able to take it up, though truth be fast tied to it." We have somewhere seen a happy allusion made to the anecdote of an honest Hollander, who, in a fit of anger at a refractory horse, after exhausting the whole magazine of Dutch hard names, and harder blows, was left, in the paroxysm of his wrath and orthodoxy, to call him outright-an Arminian. The reproachful application of this term, in failure of every other resource, we suspect is not confined to Holland, nor bestowed alone upon the brute creation. There is at the present time, we must be permitted to say, an unjust use of terms prevailing in some of the professedly learned pulpits, periodicals, and institutions of our land, which, if it be the result of want of information, is inexcusable ignorance; if of a want of regard to known fact and justice to a great and injured name, is, we must feel, palpable wickedness. Arminianism, as near as we can gather, means pretty much any thing which is not considered Calvinistic, and needs the application of a seasonable anathema. At one time, in the sermon of an eloquent pulpit rhetorician, Arminianism is pronounced to be one of the resources of the adversary, from which ruin was to be apprehended, and upon which extermination was to be denounced; at any other time, we are informed in the epistle of a learned professor that no danger was to be apprehended at all, for Arminianism, forsooth, was "dead ;" anon we find that it has been officially abjured in the inaugural formulas of theological professors, in company, we believe, with Socinianism, Atheism, and divers other damnables; and next perhaps it has been hurled at the head of some mighty heresiarch in their own firmament, who, like the great red dragon of the Apocalypse, was dragging a third part of the stars of heaven in his tail. The fact that some of the later pupils of the Arminian school degenerated into Pelagianism, no more justifies this language, than the fact that the Genevan successors of Calvin disbelieve the divinity of Christ, justifies our branding Calvinism with a denial of the trinity. Nor is the dexterous versatility with which this term is made to mean any thing or every thing heretical, much palliated by the fact, that it is applied as effectually against the living as against the dead, against another sect as well as against dubious adherents in their own sects. The major term in the syllogism is, Arminianism is every thing heterodox; the minor term is, the Wesleyan Methodists are believers in Arminianism; the consequence-any body may infer.

Still less are these severities upon Arminianism palliated by the fact, that they not seldom come, if we mistake not, from some who are not a little exposed themselves to the charge of being tinged with the same heresy. It is an exquisite mode of repelling all suspicions of the thing, by delivering one's self of denunciations of the name, and whatsoever object you please to make the name signify. We have sometimes suspected that pulpits may be found in our land, in which Arminianism is a monstrum horrendum, without defined or fixed outline, undeveloped in body or limb, save that it has a voracity for devouring souls-and yet, perhaps, something very like Arminianism, or something a little more Arminian

than Arminianism itself, shall form the staple preaching of that same pulpit. We would like to move the question, whether there be not Calvinistic pulpits, in which Calvin himself, were he to give the length and breadth of his own creed, would receive a cavalier quietus. Or whether there be not soi-disant Calvinists among us, tenacious of the title, around whom Calvin would sooner have wrapped the flames of Servetus, than the mantle of his own name. Or whether there be not theological doctors, who lay out no small expenditure of masterly intellect in cramping the substance of Arminian doctrines into the trammels of a Calvinistic nomenclature of terms, so that with the adoption of more liberalized notions, the "standing order" of articles and formulas may be still retained. The increase itself of a milder theology we hail with delight, as a harbinger of the day when one throb of unity of sentiment and affection shall thrill through the entire heart of the Christian Church. We rejoice that the spirit of Arminius may walk the earth, and his scriptural doctrine may compass the breadth thereof, although his name meet no respect, and his memory no mercy. Yet, with the liberality that can adopt new views, we would love to see the frankness that can, in explicit terms, acknowledge the change, and scorn all equivoque. To take a creed, worded in the most stereotype form of Calvinism-to strip it down to the ipsissima verba, the bare syllables, divested of the entire mass of historical connections and accredited expositions, which, from the author downward, have been embodied in multiplied strata around it-to take the words so stripped, mystify their explicitness, play upon their equivocalness, and writhe their flexibility into any desired obliquity-and then to bring in, under the name of a mere philosophical mode of exposition, all or much of what the creed has for ages been intended to condemn-this is a recipe by which you may stand on one side of the field, and combat for the othera neat expedient by which you may denounce Arminianism as roundly as Bogerman, and believe in it as soundly as Episcopius.

A question will arise, too obvious for us to meet, though too extended for us fully to discuss, how far the persecutions detailed in this volume are attributable to the opinions of the persecutors. The spirit of persecution, their apologists may plausibly say, is peculiar to no abstract religious doctrine; it is the property of the human heart, made by power too proud for contradiction, and is combinable with any opinion. If predestinarian Calvin burned Servetus, antipredestinarian Melancthon approved the deed; if Calvinian Maurice was the evil genius of Holland, Arminian Laud was the scourge of England. It may therefore be asserted, both on grounds of history and philosophy, that the Contra-remonstrant persecution was not the proper result of the Contra-remonstrant opinions.

But to the historical argument, in the first place, be it remembered there is a various reading. There are those who find that the great modern doctrine—the late and reluctantly learned lesson of the religious world-TOLERATION—arose simultaneously with Arminianism; that both are traceable to the same source-to the same It will perhaps be difficult to deny that Mr. Calder is grounded upon historic truth when he affirms that "the Remonstrants,

men.

who had imbibed the opinions and copied the conduct of the amiable Arminius, were the first among the Protestants of Europe to lift up their voice upon this subject." 'Barneveldt, who was the principal lay-leader of the Remonstrants, was perhaps the firststatesman, says Evans Crowe, that made religious toleration one of his maxims." Similar is the result at which the researches of Nichols arrived, who affirms that the earliest proclaimers of toleration in England acknowledge "their doctrine of religious liberty to have been derived from the writings of the Remonstrants." "Though the glory of the first promulgation of tolerant principles," he adds, "does not belong to the Calvinistic Independents, it is undoubtedly due to the Arminian branch of that denomination. Indeed in whatever quarter soever Dutch Arminianism achieved her conquests-whether among Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or Independents-she almost uniformly rendered them favorable to the civil and religious liberties of mankind." Mr. Thomas Jackson, in his excellent Life of one of the earliest and most eminent of the English pupils of the Dutch Arminian school, John Goodwin, (a work we wish better known to American readers,) remarks, "It is highly honorable to him, though the fact is little known, that he was the first of our country. men who excited general attention by writing distinctly in defence of universal liberty of conscience as one of the most sacred rights of human nature. He had published several admirable tracts against all coercion in matters purely religious, before either Locke or Milton, or even Dr. Owen, wrote a single line upon the subject.” Speaking of Episcopius and his compeers during their banishment after the Synod of Dort, Rev. Richard Watson remarks, "The immense literary labors in which they were compelled to engage during this troublous period have, by the admirable overruling acts of Providence, been rendered most valuable blessings to the whole of Christendom. Such doctrines and principles were then brought under discussion as served to enlighten every country in Europe on the grand subject of civil and religious liberty, the true nature of which from that time has been better understood, and its beneficial effects more generally appreciated and enjoyed." Such then is our reading of the history of the matter. The doctrine of universal toleration, avowed now by every informed mind, propagated in every form of publication, the most popular motto of the politician, familiar as a household term, is properly a hard-found, dearly bought, modern discovery. Unknown in the days of papacy, misunderstood by the reformers, who claimed it for themselves, but applied it not as a principle to all others, its rise was in the rise of Arminianism; and when its principles were being developed and its contest won, Calvinism was its opponent, the Synod of Dort its Thermopylæ, the Dutch Remonstrants its champions, and at their head-may we not say?-their noble leader, Simon Episcopius.

If upon the historical grounds such are our positions, what conclusions may we deduce from the philosophy of the creed itself, and its probable operations upon the human mind? Granting that persecution is often the sheer projectile from the ambition centred in the heart independent of any creed; granting that a Maurice persecuted, not for the sake of the divine decrees, but for his own despotism; that a Laud oppressed, not from love of universal