1603–1610

The Arminian Controversy, the Remonstrance, and Socinianism

In 1603 a dispute over predestination and grace broke out in Leiden between professor Jacobus Arminius and the supralapsarian Franciscus Gomarus. Arminius remained a Calvinist. He died in 1609, and in 1610 his followers – Simon Episcopius, Johannes Uytenbogaert, Hugo Grotius, Philipp van Limborch – submitted the five-article "Remonstrance". Its supporters came to be called Remonstrants. The dispute became entangled with the political struggle between the merchant oligarchy (Oldenbarnevelt) and the party of Maurice of Nassau.

Almost simultaneously, in Poland, Faustus Socinus's disciples set out his anti-Trinitarian teaching in the Racovian Catechism. This came a year after Socinus's death (1605). The catechism was one of the later sources of English Unitarianism.