Arminius, thus forewarned, traveled northward and then decided upon something quite unusual. He boldly invaded the enemy’s territory, studied for a few semesters in the University of Padua and paid a visit to Rome. This made him a dangerous person in the eyes of his fellow countrymen when he returned to his native country in the year 1587. But as he seemed to develop neither horns nor a tail, he was gradually taken back into their good favor and was allowed to accept a call as minister to Amsterdam. There he made himself not only useful but he gained quite a reputation as a hero during one of the many outbreaks of the plague. Soon he was held in such genuine esteem that he was entrusted with the task of reorganizing the public school system of that big city and when in the year 1603 he was called to Leiden as a full-fledged professor of theology, he left the capital amidst the sincere regrets of the entire population. If he had known beforehand what was awaiting him in Leiden, I am sure he would never have gone. He arrived just when the battle between the Infralapsarians and the Supralapsarians was at its height. Arminius was both by nature and education an Infralapsarian. He tried to be fair to his colleague, the Supralapsarian Gomarus. But alas, the differences between the Supralapsarians and the Infralapsarians were such as allowed of no compromise. And Arminius was forced to declare himself an out and out Infralapsarian. Of course, you will ask me what Supra- and Infralapsarians were. I don’t know, and I seem unable to learn such things. But as far as I can make out, it was the age-old quarrel between those who believed (as did Arminius) that man is to a certain extent possessed of a free will and able to shape his own destinies and those who like Sophocles and Calvin and Gomarus taught that everything in our lives has been pre-ordained ages before we were born and that our fate therefore depends upon a throw of the divine dice at the hour of creation. In the year 1600 by far the greater number of the people of northern Europe were Supralapsarians. They loved to listen to sermons which doomed the majority of their neighbors to eternal perdition and those few ministers who dared to preach a gospel of good will and charity were at once suspected of criminal weakness, fit rivals of those tender hearted doctors who fail to prescribe malodorous medicines and kill their patients by their kindness. As soon as the gossiping old women of Leiden had discovered that Arminius was an Infralapsarian, his usefulness had come to an end. The poor man died under the torrent of abuse that was let loose upon him by his former friends and supporters. And then, as seemed unavoidable during the seventeenth century, Infralapsarianism and Supralapsarianism made their entrance into the field of politics and the Supralapsarians won at the polls and the Infralapsarians were declared enemies of the public order and traitors to their country.