GOMARUS, Francis (1563-1641), professor of theology at Leyden, was born at Bruges on the 30th January 1563. His parents, having embraced the principles of the Reformation, emigrated to the Palatinate in 1578, in order to enjoy freedom to profess their new faith, and they sent their son to be educated at Strasburg under John Sturmius, He remained there three years and then went to Neustadt, whither the professors of Fleidelberg had been driven by the electorpalatine because they were not Lutherans. He did not stay long at Neustadt, but crossed to England towards the end of the year 1582, and entered first the university of Oxford, where he attended the lectures of John Raynold, and then the university of Cambridge, where he attended those of William Whitaker. At Cambridge he received his bachelor’s degree in June 1584, and thence proceeded to Heidelberg, where the faculty had been by this time reestablished, and continued his studies there for two years more. He was called to be minister of a Reformed church in Frankfort in 1587, and laboured there till the congregation was dispersed by the persecution of the year 1593. In 1594 he was appointed professor of theology at Leyden, and before going thither received from the university of Heidelberg the degree of doctor. He taught quietly at Leyden till 1603, when Arminius came to be one of his colleagues in the theological faculty, and began to teach Pelagian doctrines and to create a new party in the university. Gomarus immediately set himself earnestly to oppose these views, in his classes at college, and wherever he found opportunity. He became the leader of the opponents of Arminius, who from that circumstance came to be known as Gomarists. He engaged twice iu personal disputation with Arminius in the assembly of the ...