LIMBORCH, Philip van (1633-1712), a prominent Remonstrant theologian, was born June 19, 1633, at Amsterdam, where his father held a good position in the legal profession. He received his education at Utrecht, at Leyden, in his native city, and finally at Utrecht university, which he entered in 1652. In 1657 he became a Remonstrant pastor at Gouda, and in 1667 he was transferred to Amsterdam, where, in the following year, the office of professor of theology in the Remonstrant seminary was added to his pastoral charge. He died there on April 30, 1712....
His most important work, Institutiones theologiae christianae, ad praxin pietatis et promotionem pacis christianae unice diredae (Amsterdam, 1686,5th ed. 1735), remains unrivalled as a full and clear exposition of the system of Episcopims and Curcellaeus. The fourth edition (1715) included a posthumous “Relatio historica de origine et progressu controversiarum in foederato Belgio de praedestinatione.” Limborch also wrote De veritate religionis Christianae amica collatio cum erudito Judaeo, Gouda, 1687; Historia Inquisitionis (1692), in four books prefixed to the “Liber Sententiarum Inquisitionis Tolosanae” (1307-1323), and Commentarius in Acta Apostolorum et in Epistolas ad Romanes et ad Hcbraeos, Rotterdam, 1711. His editorial labours included the publication of various works of his predecessors, and of Epistolae ecclesiasticae prae- stantium ac eruditorum virorum (Amsterdam, 1684), chiefly by Arminius, Uytenbogardus, Vorstius, Vossius, Grotius, Episcopius (his grand-uncle), and Barlaeus; they are of great value for the history of Arminianism. An English translation of the Theologia, “with improvements, from Wilkinson, Tillotson, Scott, and others,” was published in the beginning of last century by W. Jones (∠4 Complete System or Body of Divinity, both Speculative and Practical, founded on Scripture and Reason, London, 1702); and a translation of the History of the Inquisition, by S. Chandler, with “a large introduction concerning the rise and progress of persecution and the real and pretended causes of it” prefixed, appeared in 1731.
