he is told that VOETIUS, one of the most violent of his enemies, laid down this grand axiom—­’To place the principal part of religion in an observance of Christ’s commands is RANK SOCIANISM!’ To such a practical observance of the requisitions of the Gospel, by what name soever it might be stigmatized, Grotius pleaded guilty.  He says (p. 637) ’I perceive this was accounted the principal part of religion by the Christians of the primitive ages; and their various assemblies, divines, and martyrs taught, ’that the doctrines necessary to be known are exceedingly few, but that God forms his estimate of us from the purpose and intention of an obedient spirit.’  I am likewise of the same opinion, and shall never repent of having maintained it.’

“But as the charge of POPERY is of the utmost consequence, I have discussed this topic at great length, (pp. 566, 746), and have proved (pp. 549, 561), that Grotius was as little attached to the principles or the practice of the Romish church as the most zealous of his accusers.  Whatever tends to vindicate the conduct of Grotius in this matter, will operate still more powerfully in favour of Archbishop Laud.  The design of Grotius is well described by Dr. Hammond, in a Digression which he added to his Answer to the Animadversions on his Dissertations; in which he says,

“’For the charge of Popery that is fallen upon him, it is evident from whence that flows,—­either from his profest opposition to many doctrines of some Reformers, Zuinglius and Calvin, &c. or from his Annotations on Cassander, and the Debates with Rivet consequent thereto, the Votum pro pace and Discussio.’

“For the former of these, it is sufficiently known what contests there were, and at length how profest the divisions betwixt the Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants; and it is confessed that he maintained (all his time) the Remonstrants party, vindicating it from all charge, whether of Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism, which was by the opposers objected to it, and pressing the favourers of the doctrine of Irrespective Decrees with the odious consequences of making God the author and favourer of sin, and frequently expressing his sense of the evil influences that some of those doctrines were experimented to have on men’s lives.  And by these means it is not strange that he should fall under great displeasure from those who, having espoused the opinion of Irrespective Decrees, did not only publish it as the THE TRUTH and TRUTH OF GOD, but farther asserted the questioning of it to be injurious to God’s free grace and his Eternal Election, and consequently retained no ordinary patience for or charity to opposers.  But, then, still this is no medium to to infer that charge.  The doctrines which he thus maintained were neither branches nor characters of Popery, but asserted by some of the first and most learned and pious Reformers.  Witness