The controversy to which Arminianism had given rise, was carried on after the death of its founder, with the greatest eagerness, and produced the most bitter and deplorable dissensions. The Arminians requested nothing more than a bare toleration. This moderate demand, at all times reasonable and just, was particularly so in Holland, which had thrown off the yoke of civil and spiritual despotism, and where the received confession of faith had not determined the questions under debate. It was strongly urged by Grotius, Hoogerbeets, Olden Barnevelt, and other persons of respectability and influence. And Maurice, prince of Orange, and his mother the princess dowager, giving countenance to the claim, there was some prospect of the Calvinists being persuaded to enter into pacific measures, and to treat their dissenting brethren with forbearance. Accordingly, in the year 1611, a conference between the contending parties was held at the Hague, on which occasion, it is commonly asserted, the toleration required was offered to the Arminians, provided they would renounce the errors of Socinianism,--though the papers which passed between the parties at that conference, as authenticated by each of them, contain no proviso of that description. Another conference was held at Delft, in 1613. And in 1614, the States of Holland promulgated an edict, exhorting the disputants to the exercise of mutual charity. But these and other expedients employed for the same purpose, had not the desired effect. The Calvinists expressed great indignation at the magistrates, for endeavouring, by their authority, to promote a union with such adversaries. The conduct of the States was ably and eloquently defended by Grotius, in two treatises, entitled, “_De Jure Summarum Potestatum circa sacra_,” and “_Ordinum Hollandiæ, ac West-Frisiæ Pietas a multorum calumniis vindicata_.”
The hopes of success which the Arminians entertained from the indulgent manner in which they were treated by the civil authorities, were soon blasted by a misunderstanding which had secretly subsisted for some time between the stadtholder and the principal magistrates, and at last broke forth into an open rupture. Maurice, being suspected of aiming at sovereign power, was firmly opposed by the leading persons in the government, who had been the friends and patrons of the Arminians, and to whom, therefore, these adhered at this difficult crisis. On the other hand, the Gomarists, or Calvinists, attached themselves to Maurice, and inflamed the resentment which he had already, for various reasons, conceived against the Arminians. The prince was resolved, at once to ruin the ministers who had ventured to oppose his schemes of usurpation, and to crush the Arminians, by whom those statesmen had been warmly supported. For this purpose he got the leading men cast into prison. Barnevelt, whose long and faithful services deserved a better fate, died on the scaffold: and Grotius and Hoogerbeets, under pretexts more plausible than solid, were unjustly condemned to perpetual imprisonment, from which, however, the former afterward escaped, and fled into France. The alleged crime of the Arminians being of an ecclesiastical nature, it was thought proper to bring their cause before a national assembly of divines by which their religious opinions might be regularly and finally condemned.