wine or beer without payment of duty to city or state. The following is a copy of the record on the University

During those Leyden days the controversy between Calvinist and Arminian was stirring hot blood on both sides. Lectures by Polyander and counter-lectures by Episcopius were being delivered in the University itself, John Robinson listening and deeply pondering. He was even prevailed upon-though after much hesitation-by Polyander, Festus Hommius, and other professors, to enter the lists himself against Episcopius in public discussion. This discussion lasted three days; and Bradford, who probably was present, and perhaps not altogether impartial, says that the Lord did so help this pastor of his 'to defend the truth and foil his adversary, as he put him to an apparent non-plus in this great and public audience. This so famous victory procured him much honour and respect from those learned men and others who loved the truth.'

The question at issue between Robinson and Episcopius was more vital and far-reaching than these quiet words of Bradford might lead us to suppose, and we shall not feel to the full the pulsations of life in the midst of which the exiles were living at Leyden unless we realize what these deeper issues were. The controversy of that time between the followers of Arminius and of Gomarus, between Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, was no mere academical question, no merely intellectual tournament. The question of predestination and free-will had become more than a doctrinal question among theologians. It had widened out.

into far broader issues, and become the watchword of political party and national strife. The Remonstrants were not merely the followers of Arminius and Grotius in the matter of doctrine; they were on the side of John of Barneveld, and therefore in favour of a National Church, controlled, in Erastian fashion, by the magistracy, and in favour also of the unpopular truce with Spain, the national foe. The Contra-Remonstrants, on the other hand, were not merely the followers of Calvin and Gomarus in the matter of predestination unto life, politically also they were on the side of Prince Maurice, the Stadholder, against Barneveld, the advocate, and therefore in favour of a Free Church in a Free State, and in favour, also, of still carrying on the war with Spain, their ancient and implacable foe.

Here, indeed, was burning material enough to set many cities on fire. This controversy ran through the whole community, as did the Arian controversy at Constantinople and Alexandria, centuries before. Speaking of the latter, Eusebius says that bishop rose against bishop, district against district, only to be compared to the Symplegades dashed against each other on a stormy day; and Gregory of Nyssa adds to this that every corner, every alley of Constantinople was full of these discussions-the streets, the market-places, the drapers, the money-changers. Scarcely less absorbing came to be the question between Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant during much of the time the Scrooby brethren found a home in Leyden. In burghers' mansions and peasants' cottages, in shops, countinghouses, farmyards, and guard-rooms; in blacksmiths' shops on land and in fishermen's barques at sea, the controversy went on its way, men losing themselves in high converse on fate, free-will, and foreknowledge absolute. Not seldom the tumult round the churches, even on Sundays, ended in open fight with knives, bludgeons, or brickbats. The conflict for supremacy between the civil and military

elements, as embodied in Barneveld on the one hand and Prince Maurice on the other, was coming to a death-grapple. In 1617 the prince took military possession of some of the principal cities, and one morning the people from Scrooby, along with the rest of the citizens, saw the beautiful townhall of Leyden enclosed by a solid palisade of oaken planks, strengthened by iron bars with barbed prongs, saw cannon planted along the work, and companies of Waartgelders, armed from head to foot, drawn up in line. The conviction spread through Zealand, Friesland, Gröningen, and Guelderland, that the Arminian party was dangerous to the State, that the danger should be met by a common act of the confederacy, and that to this end a national synod should be called. This was the origin of the great Synod of Dort, which held its hundred and eighty sessions between November, 1618, and the following May, and which ended in pronouncing the followers of Arminius to be heretics and schismatics, and declaring them incapable of holding either clerical or academical post. So for the moment the storm passed off till a greater storm should come, and Europe, in a Thirty Years' War, be deluged with blood.

THE WRITINGS OF JOHN ROBINSON.

THE pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers wielded so powerful an influence over the minds of the men who were the earliest founders of New England, that it may be worth while to see what he was, not only as the pastor of the Leyden Church, but also as a worker in the fields of literature. There are three volumes of his collected works, and a further little tractate which has come to light in recent years. As we might expect from the circumstances of the time, his writings are mainly controversial, but defensive rather than offensive. He was the trusted leader of a little The Works of John Robinson: with Memoir and Annotations by Robert Ashton. Three vols. London, 1851.

2 A Manumission to a Manuduction. By John Robinson. 1615.

band of Separatists who were assailed from many sides, and he felt it to be his duty to go forth again and again into the field as their champion. They had no occasion ever to be ashamed of their leader. If his thrusts are penetrating, his temper is Christian. He seldom speaks bitterly, only, indeed, when he feels more keenly than usual the cruel injustice of the time which keeps them in exile from the land he loves.

The non-controversial writings of John Robinson consist of sixty-two essays on various religious and moral subjects, which had occupied mind and pen during different periods of his life, but which did not see the light till after his death. He describes them as New Essays; or, Observations Divine and Moral, and in framing them he says he had respect first of all to the Scriptures, next to the memorable sayings of wise and learned men, which he had carefully stored up as a precious treasure; and, lastly, to the great book of human life in its many phases, the volume of men's manners, which he had diligently observed during the days of his pilgrimage, having had special opportunity of conversing with men of divers nations, estates, and dispositions in great variety. During his stormy and troubled life this kind of study and meditation had been to him full, sweet, and delightful, and had often refreshed his spirit amidst many sad and sorrowful thoughts unto which God had called him. These essays show the varied range of his reading as well as the reflective character of his mind. We find him quoting Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Thales, Cicero, Terence, Pliny, Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, and Suetonius; among the Fathers, Ignatius, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen, Lactantius, Jerome, Basil, and Eusebius; while from among the writers of later times we find quotations from Bernard, Anselm, Scaliger, Beza, Erasmus, and Melanchthon, as well as from his own contemporaries.