(or BISCHOP) SIMON, the most learned of the Arminian divines of the seventeenth century, was born at Amsterdam in 1583. He studied philosophy and theology at the university of Leyden; and in the contests between the Gomarists and the followers of Arminius, which at that time first began to divide the church, he espoused the party of the latter. In 1610, the year in which the Arminians presented their famous Remonstrance to the states of Holland, he was ordained minister of a small village in the neighbourhood of Rotterdam; and in the following year he advocated the cause of the Remonstrants at the Hague Conference. In 1612 he succeeded Gomar as professor of theology at Leyden; and in spite of the abuse and violence of the Gomarists, continued to hold his chair till 1619, when he was deposed and expelled by the synod of Dort. Having retired to France, Episcopius devoted the greater part of his energies to the promotion of the Arminian cause; but the attempt of Wadding to win him over to the Romish faith involved him at the same time in a controversy with that famous Jesuit. After the death of the stadtholder Maurice, the violence of the Arminian persecution began to abate; and Episcopius was permitted, in 1626, to resume his duties in the Remonstrant church of Rotterdam. He was afterwards appointed rector of the Remonstrant college at Amsterdam, where he died in 1643, at the age of 60. His works were collected in 2 vols. fol., by his successor Curcellaeus, who, as well as Limborch, has furnished a biography of this celebrated divine.