supralapsarian to the infralapsarian position, i.e. made the divine decree, instead of precede and determine, succeed the Fall. This seemed to the high Calvinists of Holland a grave heresy. Arminius, fresh from Geneva, familiar with the dialectics of Beza, appeared to many the man able to speak the needed word, and so, in 1589, he was simultaneously invited by the ecclesiastical court of Amsterdam to refute Coornhert, and by Martin Lydius, professor at Franeker, to combat the two infralapsarian ministers of Delft. Thus led to confront the questions of necessity and free will, his own views became unsettled, and the further he pursued his inquiries the more he was inclined to assert the freedom of man and limit the range of the unconditional decrees of God. This change became gradually more apparent in his preaching and in his conferences with his clerical associates, and occasioned much controversy in the ecclesiastical courts where, however, he successfully defended his position. The controversy was embittered and the differences sharpened by his appointment to the professorship at Leiden. He had as colleague Franz Gomarus, a strong supralapsarian, perfervid, irrepressible; and their collisions, personal, official, political, tended to develop and define their respective positions.
Arminius died, worn out by uncongenial controversy and ecclesiastical persecution, before his system had been elaborated into the logical consistency it attained in the hands of his celebrated successor, Simon Episcopius; but though inchoate in detail, it was in its principles clear and coherent enough. These may be thus stated:
1. The decree of God is, when it concerns His own actions, absolute, but when it concerns man’s, conditional, i.e. the decree relative to the Saviour to be appointed and the salvation to be provided is absolute, but the decree relative to the persons saved or condemned is made to depend on the acts—belief and repentance in the one case, unbelief and impenitence in the other—of the persons themselves.
2. The providence or government of God, while sovereign, is exercised in harmony with the nature of the creatures governed, i.e. the sovereignty of God is so exercised as to be compatible with the freedom of man.
3. Man is by original nature, through the assistance of divine grace, free, able to will and perform the right; but is in his fallen state, of and by himself, unable to do so; he needs to be regenerated in all his powers before he can do what is good and pleasing to God.
4. Divine grace originates, maintains and perfects all the good in man, so much so that he cannot, though regenerate, conceive, will or do any good thing without it.
5. The saints possess, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, sufficient strength to persevere to the end in spite of sin and the flesh, but may so decline from sound doctrine as to cause divine grace to be ineffectual.
6. Every believer may be assured of his own salvation.
7. It is possible for a regenerate man to live without sin.
Arminius’s works are mostly occasional treatises drawn from him by controversial emergencies, but they everywhere exhibit a calm, well-furnished, undogmatic and progressive mind. He was essentially an amiable man, who hated the zeal for an impossible orthodoxy that constrained “the church to institute a search after crimes which have not betrayed an existence, yea, and to drag into open contentions those who are meditating no evil.” His friend Peter Bertius, who pronounced his funeral oration, closed it with these words: “There lived a man whom it was not possible for those who knew him sufficiently to esteem; those who entertained no esteem for him are such as never knew him well enough to appreciate his merits.”
The works of Arminius (in Latin) were published in a single quarto volume at Leiden in 1629, at Frankfort in 1631 and 1635. Two volumes of an English translation, with copious notes, by James Nichols, were published at London, 1825–1828; three volumes (complete) at Buffalo, 1853. A life was written by Caspar Brandt, son of Gerard Brandt, the historian of the Dutch reformation, and published in 1724; republished and annotated by J. L. Mosheim in 1725; and translated into English by the Rev. John Guthrie, 1854. James Nichols also wrote a life (London, 1843).
ARMISTICE (from Lat. arma, arms, and sistere, to stop), a suspension of hostilities by mutual agreement between two nations at war, or their respective forces. An armistice may be either general or particular; in the first case there is a complete cessation of hostile operations in every part of the dominions of the belligerent powers; in the second there is merely a temporary truce between two contending armies, or between a besieged fortress and the force besieging it. Such a temporary truce, when for a very limited period and for a special purpose, e.g. the collection of the wounded and the burial of the dead, is termed a suspension of arms. A general armistice cannot be concluded by the commanders-in-chief unless special authority has been previously delegated to them by their respective governments; otherwise any arrangement entered into by them requires subsequent ratification by the supreme powers of the states. A partial truce may be concluded by the officers of the respective powers, without any special authority from their governments, wherever, from the nature and extent of the commands they exercise, their duties could not be efficiently discharged without their possession of such a power. The conduct of belligerent parties during an armistice is usually regulated in modern warfare by express agreement between the parties, but where this is not the case the following general conditions may be laid down. (1) Each party may do, within the limits prescribed by the truce, whatever he could have done in time of peace. For example, he can raise troops, collect stores, receive reinforcements and fortify places that are not actually in a state of siege. (2) Neither party can take advantage of the armistice to do what he could not have done had military operations continued. Thus he cannot throw provisions or reinforcements into a besieged town, and neither besiegers nor besieged are at liberty to repair their fortifications or erect new works. (3) All things contained in places the possession of which was contested, must remain in the state in which they were before the armistice began. Any infringement by either party of the conditions of the truce entitles the other to recommence hostile operations without previous intimation.
ARMOIRE, the French name (cf. Almery) given to a tall movable cupboard, or “wardrobe,” with one or more doors. It has varied considerably in shape and size, and the decoration of its doors and sides has faithfully represented mutations of fashion and modifications of use. It was originally exceedingly massive and found its chief decoration in elaborate hinges and locks of beaten iron. The finer ecclesiastical armoires or aumbries which have come down to us—used in churches for the safe custody of vestments, eucharistic vessels, reliquaries and other precious objects—are usually painted, sometimes even upon the interior, with sacred subjects or with incidents from the lives of the saints. The cathedrals of Bayeux and Noyon contain famous examples; the most typical English one is in York minster. By the end of the 14th century, when the carpenter and the wood-carver had acquired a better mastery of their material, the taste for painted surfaces appears to have given place to the vogue of carving, and the simple rectangular panels gradually became sculptured with a simple motive, such as the linen-fold or parchment patterns. In the treasury of St Germain l’Auxerrois the ends of the 15th-century armoires are treated in this way. In that and the two following centuries the keys and the escutcheons of the locks became highly ornamental; usually in forged iron, they were occasionally made of more precious metals. By slow degrees the shape of this receptacle changed—from breadth was evolved height, and the tall form of armoire became characteristic. The Renaissance exercised a notable effect upon this, as upon so many other varieties of furniture. It became less obviously and aggressively a thing of utility; its proportions shrank from the massive to the elegant; its artistic effectiveness was vastly enhanced by its division into an upper and a lower part. Enriched with columns and pilasters, its panels carved with mythology, its canopied niches filled with sculptured statuettes, and terminating with a rich cornice and perhaps a broken pediment, it was widely removed in appearance, if not in purpose, from the uncompromising iron-mounted receptacle of earlier
