between
fanatical theologians on the subject of predestination and grace.

From early times Calvinism in the northern Netherlands had been divided
into two schools. The strict Calvinists or "Reformed," known by their
opponents as "Precisians," and the liberal Calvinists, "the
Evangelicals," otherwise "the Libertines." To this Libertine party
belonged William the Silent, Oldenbarneveldt and the majority of the
burgher-regents of Holland. These men regarded the religious question
from the statesman's point of view. Having risen in rebellion against
the tyranny of the Spanish Inquisition, they were anxious to preserve
their countrymen (only a minority of whom were Protestants) from being
placed under the heel of a religious intolerance as narrow and bigoted
as that from which they had escaped. The "Reformed" congregations on the
other hand, led by the preachers, were anxious to summon a National
Synod for the purpose of creating a State Church to whose tenets,
rigidly defined by the Heidelberg catechism and the Netherland
confession, all would be required to conform on pain of being deprived
of their rights as citizens. The Libertines were opposed to such a
scheme, as an interference with the rights of each province to regulate
its own religious affairs, and as an attempt to assert the supremacy of
Church over State.

The struggle between the two parties, which had continued intermittently
for a number of years, suddenly became acute through the appointment by
Maurice of Jacob Harmensz, better known as Arminius, to the Chair of
Theology at Leyden, vacated by the death of Junius in 1602. The leader
of the strict Calvinist school, the learned Franciscus Gomarus, had at
the time of the appointment of Arminius already been a professor at
Leyden for eight years. Each teacher gathered round him a following of
devoted disciples, and a violent collision was inevitable. Prolonged and
heated controversy on the high doctrines of Predestination and Freewill
led to many appeals being made to the States-General and to the Estates
of Holland to convene a Synod to settle the disputed questions, but
neither of these bodies in the midst of the negotiations for the truce
was willing to complicate matters by taking a step that could not fail
to accentuate existing discords. Six months after the truce was signed
Arminius died. The quarrel, however, was only to grow more embittered.
Johannes Uyttenbogaert took the leadership of the Arminians,