VORST, vorst, KONRAD (CONRADUS VORSTIUS): Dutch Armenian; b. at Cologne July 19, 1569; d. at Tonning (47 m. e. of Kiel) Sept. 29, 1622. He studied at Düsseldorf (1583-87), and then entered the college of St. Lawrence in Cologne; he next studied for two years to prepare for a mercantile life, but in 1589 again altered his intention and studied at the University of Herborn until 1593, when he went to Heidelberg and there received the theological doctorate in 1594; in 1595 he went to Basel and Geneva, where his disputations De sacramentis (Basel, 1595) and De causes salutes (1595) gained him the offer of a position as teacher; instead, he went to Steinfurt. There his De prcedestinatione (Steinfurt, 1597); De sancta Trihitate (1597); and De persona et officio, Christi (1597) had brought upon him the suspicion of Socinianism, but in 1599 he successfully defended his orthodoxy before the theological faculty of Heidelberg. He rose to such honor in Steinfurt that in 1605 he received the additional appointments of preacher and assessor to the consistory. After the death of Arminius, he accepted, in 1610, a call to Leyden, where the Remonstrants hoped to find in him one of their chief supporters. He reprinted in 1610 his Disputationes decem de natura et attributes Dei (Steinfurt, 1602) as Tractatus theologicus de Deo sine de rtatura et attributes Dei, and in the same year published his Anti-Bellarminus (1610). His statements in the Tractatus on God, the divine attributes, predestination, and Christ led the contra-Remonstrants to accuse him of Socinianism and gross heterodoxy. The Heidelberg theologians condemned the book, whereupon Vorst replied in his Protestatio epistolica contra theologorum Heidelbergensium (The Hague, 1610). His opponents won over James I. of England, who caused Vorst's book to be burned in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, and informed the States-General, through his Ambassador Rudolph Winwood, that he would consider them his enemies if they tolerated the presence of such a heretic. Vorst wrote in reply his Christians ac modesta responsio ad articulos quosdam nuper ex Anglia transmissos (Leyden, 1611), but the States-General were obliged to dismiss him, though continuing his salary, whereupon he nettled .as an exile in Gouda, about May, 1612. In the previous year he had seriously injured himself by reediting Socinus' De auctoritate sanctce scriptures, though he later claimed to have been ignorant of the authorship of the work.

Attacks on Vorst continued without intermission and Vorst pleaded his cause with bitter intensity in a series of polemics, especially Catalogus errorum sive hallueinationum D: Sibr. Lubberti (Steinfurt, 1611); Prodromus plenioris response suo temPore secuturi ad declarationem Sibrandi Lubberti et ministrorum Leovardensium iteratam cautionem (Leyden, 1612); Responsum plenius ad scripts qucedam eristica (1612) - and Parcenesis ad Sibrandum Lubbertum (Gouda, 1613). Finally, in 1619, he was condemned as a heretic by the Synod of Dort and banished. He accordingly fled from Gouda and remained in hiding, chiefly in or near Utrecht, until 1622, when refuge was afforded, him by the duke of Holstein. Shortly before his death he is reported to have drawn up a confession of faith in which he openly professed Sociniamsm.

Vorst was the author of over forty works, and after his death his Dutch friends published his commentary on the Pauline epistles (Amsterdam, 1631). His son Willem Hendrijk (d. Oct. 1, 1652), who was deeply versed in Rabbinical literature, was Remonstrant preacher at Leyden after 1642, and was also suspected of Socinianism. Another son, Guernerus, was also a Remonstrant preacher at Doccum in 1632, but was banished for five years in 1634. In the following year he returned, only to be arrested and rebanished, after which he was a preacher at Hoorn (1641), Leyden (1653), and Rotterdam (1658), where he became pastor emeritus in 1680 (d. Mar., 1682). He edited his father's Doodsteek der calvinistische prcedestinatie. Descendants of Vorst were preachers in Dutch Remonstrant churches as late as 1716.

(S. D. van Veen.)

Bibliography: The oration of M. Walther was published at Frediriekstein, 1624. Consult: B. Glasius, Godgeleerd Nederland, iii. 550-557, 's Hertogenbosch, 1858; A. Schweizer, in Theologische Jahrbücher, 1858-57; C. Sepp, Het godgeleerd Ondermijs in Nederland, i. 181-214, Leyden, 1873; H. C. Rogge, in De Gids, 1873, vol. ii.: J. Reitsma, Honderd Jaren uit de geschiedenis der Heruorming en der Hervormde Kerk in Friesland, pp. 342-362, Leeuwarden, 1878; Bayle, Dictionary, v. 507-514.