Born in Amsterdam, in 1600 he entered the University of Leiden, where he studied theology under Jacobus Arminius, whose teaching he followed, and Franciscus Gomarus. He graduated M.A. in 1606, but his appointment as a minister was questioned from the Calvinist side. He went to the University of Franeker, where he heard Johannes Drusius. In 1610, the year in which the Arminians presented the Remonstrance to the states of Holland, he became pastor at Bleyswick, a village near Rotterdam; in the following year he advocated the cause of the Remonstrants at The Hague conference, and again at Delft in 1613. In 1612 he succeeded Francis Gomarius as professor of theology at Leiden; his appointment awakened the bitter enmity of some of the Calvinists. He was attacked by Festus Hommius in Specimen controversiarum Belgicarum. At the Synod of Dort in 1618, Episcopius was chosen as the spokesman of the thirteen representatives of the Remonstrants before the synod; but he was refused a hearing. At the end of the Synod's sittings in 1619, Episcopius and the other twelve Arminian representatives were deprived of their offices and expelled from the country. Episcopius retired to Antwerp and ultimately to France, where he lived partly at Paris, partly at Rouen. He devoted most of his time to writings in support of the Arminian cause. He notably wrote the Remonstrant Confession. But the attempt of Luke Wadding to convert him to Catholicism involved him also in a controversy. After the death of Maurice, prince of Orange, the violence of the Arminian controversy began to abate, and Episcopius was permitted in 1626 to return to his own country. In 1630, he was appointed preacher at the Remonstrant church in Rotterdam. In 1634 he became rector of the Remonstrant college in Amsterdam, where he died in 1643.
Views
Episcopius may be regarded as in great part the theological founder of Arminianism, since he developed and systematized the principles tentatively enunciated by Arminius. Besides opposing at all points the peculiar doctrines of Calvinism, Episcopius protested against the tendency of Calvinists to lay so much stress on abstract dogma, and argued that Christianity was practical rather than theoretical—not so much a system of intellectual belief as a moral power—and that an orthodox faith did not necessarily imply the knowledge of and assent to a system of doctrine which included the whole range of Christian truth, but only the knowledge and acceptance of so much of Christianity as was necessary to effect a real change on the heart and life.
