On the Principal Articles of the Christian Religion: Commenced by the Author Chiefly for the Purpose of Forming a System of Divinity

Jacobus Arminius (October 10, 1560 – October 19, 1609), the Latinized name of the Dutch theologian Jakob Hermanszoon from the Protestant Reformation period. He wrote many books and treatises on theology, and his views became the basis of Arminianism and the Dutch Remonstrant movement. He gained a reputation as a good preacher and faithful pastor. Through a number of sermons on the Epistle of the Romans, he had gradually developed opinions on grace, predestination and free will that were inconsistent with the doctrine of the Reformed teachers Calvin and Beza. He would not follow a doctrinal development which made God the author of sin and of the condemnation of men. He taught conditional predestination and attached more importance to faith. He denied neither God’s omnipotence nor his free grace, but he thought it his duty to save the honor of God, and to emphasize, on the basis of the clear expressions of the Bible, the free will of man as well as the truth of the doctrine of sin.