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Sunday, October 30, 2005

What is Arminianism

What is Arminianism
by Sylvester Hassell

ADVOCATE AND MESSENGER
DEVOTED TO THE CAUSE OF TRUTH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS
R. H. PITTMAN, Editor - - - SYLVESTER HASSELL, Assoc. Editor


Williamston, N.C., June 1926


WHAT IS ARMINIANISM ?

Arminianism is the system of doctrine taught by James Arminius, a Dutch theologian, who was born in A.D. 1560, and died in A.D. 1609. George Whitefield, a powerful Calvinistic or predestinarian Methodist preacher of England during the 18th Century, who also preached in the United States, said that all of us, by nature, are Arminians, that is, that all of us, like heathens, untaught of God, believe that we can save ourselves. As I have shown, on page 335 of my Church History, all Non-Catholics of the Dark Ages, before the invention of printing, when they had no Bibles, seem to have been Arminians; and so were the Baptists of the early part of the 17th Century, and at first the Churches of the Ketocton Association, until they were taught the way of God more perfectly (Church History, page 336). They were babes in grace, unable to eat strong meat; they were like nine of the ten cleansed lepers, and, though cleansed by Christ, they did not give proper glory to God. Though enabled by Christ to see, their sight was very imperfect--they saw men as trees walking. And so now the great majority of nominal Protestants, and even those called Baptists, though they may have been born of the Holy Spirit, in Europe and the United States, are unscripturally taught, and are Arminians. Of course, many have, like the most of the Catholics, never been Spiritually renewed; and we expect them to believe in salvation by forms and profession and dead works (the works of those who are dead in trespasses and sin). But since the middle of the 18th Century, I do not know of any Primitive or Old School Baptists who are Arminians; if there are any, I do not know of them. For there are none who believe in these five points of Arminianism; 1, Conditional Election (that is election unto salvation dependent upon foreseen repentance, faith, and obedience); 2, Universal Redemption (that Christ died for all human beings, but that only those who repent and believe and obey will be saved); 3, Universal Regeneration (that all human beings are born of the Holy Spirit, and can therefore repent, believe and obey); 4, The Resistibility of God's grace (that those sinners who have His grace may resist or frustrate it); 5, The Possibility of losing God's grace (that those who have it may fall from it and finally perish). I never heard any of our ministers preach these errors.

The exact opposite of Arminianism is called Calvinism (because taught so powerfully and unanswerably by John Calvin, born in Picardy in Northern France in 1509, and died in 1564.) This system of doctrine is called also Augustianism, from Augustine, the oldest of the Catholic writers--born in northern Syria in 354, died in 430, but it is improperly so called, because he taught with it Sacramentalism, the necessity of being baptized into the Catholic so-called 'Church', and the Catholics soon abandoned the doctrine of salvation by grace, and adopted the doctrine of salvation by works, and their works became the worst in the world. Calvinism is called most properly Paulinism, because taught most clearly by the Apostle Paul. This doctrine is the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures; and, at the time of the American Revolution, it is said that three-fourth of the people of the United States believed it, and they were more truthful, honest, moral and Godly than they have been since. It is the doctrine of all real Primitive Baptists, and consists of the following five points, viz.--1, God's unconditional election of His people to eternal salvation; 2, Their particular and effectual redemption by the atoning death of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, for them; 3, Their certain regeneration by His Holy Spirit; 4, The efficiency of His grace in their salvation; 5, The certainty of their preservation to eternal glory.

Only those who deny these Five Points can truthfully be called Arminians.

Sylvester Hassell.


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