ARMINIUS: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

CHAPTER II.-HIS EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION.

Ox the pleasant and fertile plains of South Holland, about half - way between Rotterdam and Utrecht, stands the ancient town of Oudewater. Distinguished by the richness and verdure of the surrounding country, and by the frugality and industry of its inhabitants, it finds a place in history as the scene of one of the many massacres which perpetuate in the Netherlands the infamy of the Spaniard. In this town Arminius first saw the light. He sprang of an honest but not patrician family of the old Batavian stock. His father, who was by trade a cutler, is said to have been an ingenious mechanic, and his mother enjoys the reputation of a worthy Dutch house-wife of thrifty habits and godly disposition. His name in the mother-tongue was Hermann; the pedantry of the times changed it into the Latinized form Arminius. That name was already famous. The son of a German chieftain, trained in the Roman service and invested with Roman honours and citizenship, rendered it memorable in the early days of the Empire. Nine years after the commencement of the Christian era the tidings flew across the Alps to Rome that the army under Varus had been destroyed and the commander had died by his own hard. The city was seized with panic. The Empire was thought to be in danger. Augustus, already in his dotage, wept like a child, tore his garments in frenzy, and called upon Varus to give him back his legions. In the woods of North Germany three brave and disciplined legions had been met by a host of native warriors led by Arminius, and after a three days' battle had been cut to pieces. The prowess of the victorious chief preserved to his country her freedom, her language, her independence.

Of the heroism associated with his name, young James Hermann

of Oudewater, was soon to stand in need. In infancy he was left an orphan, and while yet in early youth he alone of his father's house remained. By the help of God he must carve his way for himself through the world. Nor was that help withheld. His mind was hardly awake to the reality of life before the prayers of the widow were answered. Theodore Emilius became the guardian of her son, and charged himself with his education. For this he was eminently qualified by his scholarly culture, his Christian principles and life. Bred in the Romish Church, he had renounced her doctrines and worship, and embraced with enthusiasm the purer faith of the Reformation. To escape persecution, and to enjoy in peace his newly-adopted religion, he had resided occasionally at Paris, Louvain, Cologne, Utrecht, and elsewhere, as the shifting humour of the times render expedient. For those were days of most severe suffering and trial for Protestants, both in the Netherlands and in France. Flocks of foul harpies, hatched in Spain, haunted the sky, and with bloody beak and talons sought a living banquet by turns in every land. Now this city and now that furnished the horrid feast as it was given up to the greed and lust of soldiers, or the cold-blooded cruelty of the Holy Office.

When the father of Arminius died, Emilius was at Oudewater. As soon as his young charge was of fit age he began to imbue his mind with the principles of religion, and to instruct him in the elements of the classical tongues. Discovering in his pupil a singular aptness for learning, and indications of the force of genius, Emilius took occasion frequently to advise him to disregard in his plan of life worldly honour and advancement, and to devote himself to God and his conscience. The life we live here,' said the good man,

'is short and vain, but that which follows is measured not by a brief period of servitude or freedom, but by an eternity ofblessedness ordeath.' Solemn words like these impressed the heart of the orphan scholar, and led him to devout meditation and the diligent study of the Scriptures. If the panegyric of his friend Bert may be trusted, Arminius as a boy was thoughtful and studious beyond his years, and already evinced an amiable and gracious temper, and traits of unusual mental power.

massacre was

So sanguinary a not, however, an extraordinary event under the benign sway of the husband of Mary Tudor. Arminius must have been familiar with such revolting details from a child. The children cried in the streets when the Prince of Orange died; the children must have shuddered in the nursery at the names of Philip and Alva. When Philip left the Netherlands for Spain, in 1559, he gave, as his farewell counsel, commands for the extirpation of heresy. He repudiated in particular the false charity which interpreted the edicts as intended only against Anabaptists, and enjoined their strict enforcement without distinction or mercy, against all sectaries, in any way 'spotted with the errors of Luther.' Saved from shipwreck on his voyage, he recognized the hand of God anointing him to the holy work of destroying heresy throughout his dominions. As a pledge of his fidelity to his mission, and a pious thank-offering to God, he celebrated his escape from the storm, and his marriage soon after with Isabella of France, with the solemnity of burning before his own eyes sixty-three living heretics, and the bones of one long since dead.

While residing at Utrecht this kind benefactor died, and Arminius was again thrown upon the providence of God. But scarcely had Æmilius been consigned to his grave when a new patron appeared. Rudolph Snell, a native of Oudewater, driven from the Netherlands by the Inquisition, had taken refuge at Marburg, in Hesse-Cassel. In an interval of repose he returned on a visit to his fatherland. Finding at Utrecht a youth from the place of his own birth destitute and friendless, he offered him a home at Marburg. Arminius gladly accepted the offer. He was in his fifteenth year, and the university of that town was an attraction. To this providential interposition he probably owed his life. Soon after To Margaret of Parma was left his arrival at Marburg the news the administration of the affairs of came that Oudewater had been the Netherlands. Until universal besieged by the Spaniards, the detestation caused his retirement, garrison slain, the inhabitants Anthony Perrenot, Bishop of Arras, butchered, and the town itself burnt afterwards Cardinal Granville, was to the ground. The intelligence the chief adviser of the Duchess. overwhelmed him with grief. In The warmest sympathy in the work an agony of suspense he waited of death subsisted between this fourteen days, and at length de- subtle, wily, smooth-tongued, plotterminedwith characteristic boldness ting ecclesiastic and his royal master. to go at once to Oudewater, test the The bishop filled gaol, gibbet, and truth of the report, and learn the fate scaffold with victims; men, women, of his mother, or die. His worst fears and children alike suffered at the were true. The rage of the Spaniard stake. The popular discontent that had spared neither the widow nor the broke out in 1560 had led to the orphan. Mother, sister, brothers, removal of the Spanish soldiers. But and all his nearest relatives had image-breaking riots, the league of been cruelly and brutally massacred. the nobles against the Inquisition, the His home was a heap of ashes. He general attitude of revolt, the alarm turned away mournfully from the of the Duchess, furnished a pretext blackened ruins, and went back to for their return. The Duke of Alva, Marburg on foot, sad, desolate, alone. the most accomplished soldier in

Arminius at Leyden University.

51

Europe, with an army of ten thou- | lous deliverance. The stout burghers

had held out four months, and were starving by hundreds, but would not surrender. The bold sea-rovers of

sand picked veterans, entered the provinces, and inaugurated a reign of terror. The infamous Blood Council' was established. Count Zealand determined to break down Egmont, the hero of St. Quentin, Count Horn, and others, though good Catholics, were arrested, imprisoned, and beheaded. Executions took place by wholesale. Why should there be stint or delay, selection or trial? The ban of excommunication had fallen upon the whole land. A sentence of the Holy Office, in 1568, condemned to death as heretics all the inhabitants of the Netherlands, except a few persons specially named. Alva boasted that he had caused eighteen thousand six hundred persons to be executed during the six years of his government. He had made a desert, but he could not call it peace.

The people of the Netherlands would not be pacified by the sword. But they were slow to unite their forces and organize the revolution. William the Silent, Prince of Orange, ancestor of our own William the Third, exhausted his private resources and drew upon his friends in Germany in vain." The levies of undisciplined mercenaries hastily collected in the field were unequal to the stern crisis. They were scattered before the terrible energy of the Spaniard like chaff before the storm. The league of the nobles accomplished but little. But their name became a watchword. Some one stigmatized them as 'beggars.' They accepted the designation, and for more than a century afterwards 'Long live the beggars,' was the rallying cry in many a battle on land and sea. The beggars of the sea' laid the foundation-stone of the Dutch republic, established freedom at home, obtained the mastery of the ocean, and girdled the world with a zone of dependencies, comprising some of the fairest portions of the earth. It was to these brave seamen that the first successes of the revolution were due. When Leyden was besieged a second time, they affected a marvel

the dykes, let in the ocean, and float their ships up to the walls of the city. 'Go up to the tower, ye beggars,' was the taunting cry of the Spaniard, 'go up to the tower, and tell us if ye can see the ocean coming over dry land to your relief.' After long delay the ocean came. The dykes were opened, a succession of tempests swept the waters over the land, the fleet sailed to within two hundred yards of the city, and the foe fled in amazement or perished in the flood. In commemoration of this heroic defence and relief, a university was founded in the city by the Prince of Orange. It was a far more worthy memorial of gratitude to God than a pile of blazing faggots consuming for heresy the bodies of the living and the bones of the dead.

Upon the opening of the university, the year after the massacre of Oudewater, Arminius came to Leyden. He did not come alone. From Marburg he had gone to Rotterdam, where Taffin, the French chaplain to the Prince of Orange, and Bert, an exiled pastor from Amsterdam, delighted with his talents and scholarship, received him with hospitality; and the son of the Dutch pastor, recalled from England for the purpose, accompanied him to the university. The friendship thus formed continued through life. The funeral oration, in memory of Arminius, delivered in the hall of the university, thirty-three years afterwards, was delivered by Peter Bert. Arminius pursued his studies at Leyden with extraordinary ardour and success. He penetrated into almost every department of learning, and left nothing unfinished that he took in hand. He gave his days and nights to theology and philosophy, but he found time for the Hebrew and classical tongues, was very proficient in the mathematics, and wrote Latin

view was to attend the lectures of Zarabella, a celebrated professor of philosophy, at the university of Padua. He went in the company and at the intreaty of a college friend from whom during the tour he was inseparable. They had all things common, sharing food and lodgings, and reading together from a Greek Testament and a Hebrew Psalter. The journey was of service to Arminius. At Rome he saw, he said, the mystery of iniquity fouler and more detestable than he had ever dreamed. All that he had heard or read seemed trifles_com

Geneva, or change of policy on the part of Arminius, the opposition towards him gradually softened down on his return. Beza thought highly of him, and wrote a letter of commendation in reply to inquiries from Amsterdam. The venerable divine says:- Both his acquirements in learning and his manner of life have been so approved by us that we form the highest hopes respecting him.' 'For the Lord has conferred upon him, among other endowments, a happy genius for clearly perceiving the nature of things and forming a correct judgment upon them, which, if it be hence-pared with what he witnessed with forward brought under the governance of piety, of which he shows himself most studious, will undoubtedly cause his powerful genius, after it has been matured by years and confirmed by his acquaintance with things, to produce a rich and most abundant harvest.' Beza scarcely imagined, when he penned these words, that the fruits of his pupil's genius would be a system of theology which would deny the favourite tenets of Calvin, and divide the religious world for ages.

The studies of Arminius at Geneva were continued for four years with but one serious interruption. In 1586 he made an excursion into Italy. The chief object he had in

his own eyes. But he purchased his knowledge of Antichrist at a great risk. His talents and reputation had already made him the mark of envy. Detraction and insinuation now renewed their wretched work. It was whispered that he had abjured the orthodox religion, that he had become intimate with Cardinal Bellarmine, that he had frequented the assemblies of the Jesuits, that he had bowed down before the Pope and even kissed his shoe. These were baseless and absurd calumnies, but they gained currency at Amsterdam. The burgomasters were displeased. Arminius was summoned to return, and his student life abruptly closed.

Obituary.

HANNAH WEST.-As years advance and experience deepens, the chastened memories of the past become an important element in the education of our moral nature. Ripened affection delights to linger and revel amid the hallowed scenes and fragrant recollections of departed hours. The dear old home of childhood and youth, the sacred names of father and mother, brother and sister, the chamber of sickness, the wasted form, the nightly watching, the dying moan, the parting hour, the opening grave, all pass in review,

and the sorrowing heart longs for some humble and abiding memento of the loved ones gone before. To aid in this ministry of love to the surviving members of a once happy and unbroken family is the design of the following brief memoirs :

Hannah West was one of those worthy, conscientious, and strongminded women found in many homes of the village life of old England. I have often admired her stately mien and portly bearing, and imagined that she was a fair representative of those females