Declaration of Sentiments

The Declaration is addressed to the States of Holland and West Friesland. Arminius begins by recalling a conference held at The Hague between himself and Franciscus Gomarus, and the hearing afterwards at which Gomarus said that he would not dare to appear before his Maker holding the opinions Arminius professed. Arminius then offered to declare all his views openly, and this is the declaration.

The longest part concerns predestination. Arminius describes three forms of the doctrine taught by others and gives his reasons against each, and then states his own in four decrees: the appointment of Christ as mediator, the decision to receive those who repent and believe, the provision of the means of repentance and faith, and the decree to save and to damn particular persons, which he founds on God’s foreknowledge of who would believe and persevere through grace. Shorter sections follow on providence, free will, grace, perseverance, assurance and other points.

It is Arminius’s own account of his teaching and of the controversy as he saw it. What it says of Gomarus is an opponent’s report. The text itself carries no date. The heading in the American edition of 1853 says that it was delivered in Dutch before the States of Holland at The Hague on 30 October 1608, and the editor’s life of Arminius in the same volume, quoting the funeral oration of Petrus Bertius, puts his death on 19 October 1609.