By the exertions of
Archbishop Laud, and afterwards, in consequence of the general tendency
of the public mind to doctrines of mildness and comprehension, an
Arminian construction of the English articles on predestination and
free-will was adopted:--it has since prevailed,--and the Arminian creed,
by the number of its secret or open adherents, has insensibly found
admittance into every Protestant church.
[Sidenote: History of Arminianism.]
If we believe the celebrated Jurieu[045], Arminianism even in its
Socinian form, abounded, in less than a century, after the death of
Arminius, in the United Provinces, and among the Hugonots of the
adjacent part of France. By his account, the dispersion of the French
Hugonots, in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
revealed to the terrified reformers of the original school, the alarming
secret of the preponderance of Socinianism in the reformed church. Its
members, according to Jurieu, being no longer under the controul of the
civil power, spread their Socinian principles every where, with the
utmost activity and success: even in England, Jurieu professed to
discover the effect of their exertions.
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