OF SIMON EPISCOPIUS, THE CELEBRATED PUPIL OF ARMINIUS, AND SUBSEQUENTLY DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE WHO WAS CONDEMNED BY THE SYNOD OF DORT AS A DANGEROUS HERETIC, AND, TO WHICH IS ADDED, A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE SYNOD OF DORT; AND OF THE SUFFERINGS TO WHICH THE FOLLOWERS OF ARMINIUS WERE EXPOSED, IN BY FREDERICK CALDER. "Simon Episcopius, the disciple of Arminius, was admired even by his enemies, on account "The Calvinists now punished with death those dissenters who had only followed the THE subject of these memoirs lived in an age marked by fierce theological strife, as carried on between the followers of Calvin and Arminius. The prominent part he took in this conflict, with the extraordinary talents he displayed in defence of Arminianism, and the sufferings to which he was exposed, in consequence of his attachment to it, have given his name distinction in the religious history of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, as an extended account of him is only to be found in foreign publications, it is hoped that the following Memoirs, chiefly selected from such works, will not be unacceptable. The design of the writer in publishing this work is, to present an impartial portrait of the character of Episcopius, which has been greatly misrepresented by bigoted and prejudiced authors. The Synod of Dort, by which he was condemned as a heretic, divested of his honours as a scholar, deprived of his office as a professor, and excluded from the ministry, for defending the doctrines of Arminius, is particularly noticed in the following pages; whilst his banishment from Holland, the imprisonment of his brother ministers, the prohibition of the religious assemblies of the Remon A |