Remonstrants

Remonstrants , Dutch Protestants, adherents to the ideas of Jacobus Arminius , whose doctrines after his death (1609) were called Arminianism. They were Calvinists but were more liberal and less dogmatic than orthodox Calvinists and diverged from the teachings of the Dutch Reformed Church. After the death of Arminius and under the leadership of Simon Episcopius , they set forth their articles of faith for Holland and West Friesland in a petition that became known as the Remonstrance. Their main variations from orthodox views, as set forth, were conditional, rather than absolute, predestination; universal atonement; the necessity of regeneration through the Holy Ghost; the possibility of resistance to divine grace; and the possibility of relapse from grace. A movement to suppress the Remonstrants was led by Franciscus Gomarus and Prince Maurice of Nassau , and finally, after a hearing at the Synod of Dort (1618-19), the orthodox position prevailed. Remonstrants were denied church services, and their leaders were persecuted and exiled. With the death of Prince Maurice in 1625 the ban was lifted and the religion was tolerated until 1795, when it was recognized as an independent church. The Remonstrants survive as a small group in the Netherlands. They have had a liberalizing influence on Calvinist doctrine as well as on other evangelical churches.

Remonstrance, the. The statement of Arminian doctrine drawn up at Gouda in 1610. It contains the celebrated five articles, taken from J. Arminius' Declaratio Sententiae of 1608, which summarized the Remonstrants' doctrine and set the agenda for the ensuing controversies. It repudiated both the Supralapsarian and Sublapsarian form of predestination, the doctrine that Christ died only for the elect, and the notion that, for the latter, grace was both irresistible and indefectible. The Remonstrants were condemned at the Synod of Dort (1618–19).

re·mon·strance / riˈmänstrəns/ • n. a forcefully reproachful protest: angry remonstrances in the Senate | he shut his ears to any remonstrance. ∎  (the Remonstrance) a document drawn up in 1610 by the Arminians of the Dutch Reformed Church, presenting the differences between their doctrines and those of the strict Calvinists.