FOOTNOTES: 

[548] Memoires, p. 423.

[549] Le Vassor, t. 8. 2 partie, l. 40. p. 277.

[550] Ep. 537. p. 210.

[551] Ep. 550. p. 214.

[552] Ep. 55. p. 492.

[553] Ep. 1094. p. 492.

[554] P. 846.

XVI.  One of the most interesting parts of Grotius’s life is the knowledge of his sentiments in religion, and the ardent zeal with which he undertook to reunite Christians in one belief.  Brought up in the principles of Protestantism, he had in the former part of his life a great aversion to Popery.  A letter to Antony Walaeus, Nov. 10, 1611[555], in which he opens all his mind, acquaints us, that however much he might be attached to the prevailing religion in the State wherein he lived, he was persuaded that the Roman Catholics held all the fundamental truths; but they superadded, he thought, several other articles, which he treated as new opinions.  The zeal of the Jesuits for the Roman Catholic religion, and their attachment to the Pope, had rendered them extremely odious to all the enemies of the Romish church.  Grotius viewed them in the same light, agreeably to the sentiments which had been instilled into him in his infancy, as we find in a letter written, April 1, 1617[556], to his brother then in France; but when he came to riper years, he did them justice, highly valuing their society, and receiving many of them into his confidence, particularly the learned Dionysius Petavius.

FOOTNOTES: 

[555] Ep. 14 p. 4.

[556] Ep. 15. p. 759.

XVII.  Even when farthest removed from the Roman Catholic Church, he paid the greatest regard to the decisions of the ancient councils, to the discipline of the primitive Church, and the authority of the Fathers.  He writes, June 6, 1611, to John Utengobard[557], that he highly respected the ancient councils which condemned Manicheism and Pelagianism.  He declared to Vossius, July 17, 1616[558], that none held the doctrine condemned by the ancient Church in greater detestation.  “Besides the hatred, says he to Antony Walaeus, which I profess to the tenets that were unknown to pious antiquity, nothing more engages me to condemn, and overturn, as far as I can, this sort of opinions, than their being an obstacle to peace.”

In the explanation of Holy Scripture he would have the sentiments of the ancient Church adhered to.  This point he treated at a conference with the Prince of Conde, in the beginning of 1639[559]; in which he shewed, that to be a Christian, and have a right to the surname of Catholic, one must receive the Sacred Scriptures, and explain them not according to the interpretation of private persons, which had often given occasion to seditions, schisms, and even wars, but according to the sentiments of the ancient Churches, chiefly to be found in the Creeds, and in the acts of General Councils.