Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP TER III. Arminius, In Expounding Romans Ix., Encounters Fresh Storms; Confutes The Calumnies Of Plan- Ciusj And Corresponds, On Points In Dispute, With Gellius Snecanus And Francis Junius. A.d. 1592?1597. The foregoing matter being settled, and the peace of the Church having, in the way narrated, been to some extent restored, Avminius forthwith proceeded with his series of discourses on the Epistle to the Romans. To these, high and low flocked in crowds, as the day came round, including individuals of diverse shades of religious opinion. Nor were the aims of the several auditors of a less varied complexion. Some were attracted by genuine attachment to the man, and by the very great celebrity associated with his name. Others rushed upon him, on the other hand, by a sort of blind impulse, and listened to his discourses with no other view than to extract from them materials with which to lessen his growing fame, and array against him as much as possible of envy and ill-will. This Arminius soon suspected, and deemed it his duty, in consequence, to take the more care, on the one hand not to do violence to his conscience, by advocating certain doctrines of the truth of which he had some doubt; but neither, on the other, to advance aught at variance with received opinions which might justly and warrantably offend the ears of dissentients. But with all the prudence and perseverance with which he pursued this aim, now that an unfavourable opinion had once been formed against him, he could not succeed in thoroughly rooting it out of the minds of his compeers, and of those who yielded themselves up to their authority. That feeling began especially to be resuscitated in the commencement of the following year, on the occasion of his expounding the ninth chapter of the R...

This is a major study of the theology of grace in the English Church between the Reformation and the Civil War. On the basis of a wide reading of both English and continental writings, the author challenges the prevailing view that there was essentially a 'Calvinist' consensus in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Church, and stresses instead an indigenous latitudinarianism of doctrine against which a concerted campaign was conducted in the last decade of the sixteenth century in the controversies which led to the Lambeth Articles. Mr White reviews the impact Arminian ideas had in England, firstly through a detailed exposition of the theology of Arminius, and subsequently by means of a review of the links between the English and Dutch churches as the quarrel between the Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants reached its climax in the Synod of Dort. Other chapters discuss the place of Hooker in English theology, the impact of Richard Montagu, the ideas of Thomas Jackson, the writings of Neile and Laud on predestination, and the regulation of doctrine in the period of Personal Rule. At all stages the theological debate is related to its political - and often polemical - context, not least in a carefully documented reassessment of the role of the court both in the last years of James' reign and in the early years of the rule of Charles I.

Indexes : Methodist review, Methodist quarterly review, United Brethren review, Religion in life, and Quarterly review.