the Churches in his time.  He asserts[611], that the Jews knew and admitted of a Purgatory.  One of the articles which made most noise in the beginning of the grand Schism in the sixteenth Century was that of justification, Grotius declares[612], that the more he examined the Scriptures, the greater agreement he discovered between them and the tradition of the Roman Church concerning justification.  He was persuaded that it had the same idea of the Catholic Church mentioned in the Creed, as the ancients entertained.  He would have men submit to the decisions of general councils[613]; and maintains that a pious and peaceable man ought not to contradict them when their decrees are received by almost all the Churches, especially those which were founded by the Apostles.  He means no doubt the Council of Trent.

Grotius must have supposed that the Church could not err, when he wrote[614], “The Bishops of Rome may be in an error, but they cannot long remain, in it, if they adhere to the universal Church.”  He was persuaded that we run no danger in embracing a doctrine taught by the Greek and Latin Churches[615]:  “For, says he, the points in which these two Churches agree have been decided by the Apostles or by general Councils.”  He maintains that expressions tho’ new, ought to be received in Theology[616], when they are supported by the authority of General Councils.  This was in opposition to the Protestants, who maintained that the term transubstantiation ought to be rejected on account of its novelty.  He is positive that such as depart from what was practised by the whole Church, and confirmed by Councils[617], are guilty of a most insolent folly, as St. Augustine said.  He acknowledged the utility of tradition.  Had he lived in the time of the Apostles he would have believed, he tells us, what they said, as well as what they wrote[618].  He was persuaded that the goodness of God[619] had not permitted the doctrine of the universal Church to be corrupted, though the manners of the Pastors of the Church might be reprehensible.  He entertained the same opinion, he tells us[620], concerning the authority of the Fathers as the illustrious Father Petavius in the Prolegomena prefixed to his most useful body of Divinity.

The works of the Apostolical Fathers were, next to the Scriptures, Grotius’s favourite study.  When he heard that the Epistle of St. Clement, which had been long lost to the world, was published in England by Junius[621], from a Manuscript brought from Egypt, and written about the time of the Council of Nice, he expressed his satisfaction to Descordes[622], in a letter from Hamburg, dated June 1, 1633.  “You gave me great pleasure by informing me of the discovery of the Epistle of St. Clement of Rome.  No pains should be spared to recover those Fragments, which partake much of the nature of the apostolical Writings:  and they ought not to be wholly rejected on account of interpolations:  we must do with them as with metals, separate the dross from the pure metal.  Would to God that Father Sirmond, or some one of his society like him, would give us the Epistle of Barnabas, from which there are some quotations in Clement of Alexandria.  I remember to have heard Father Sirmond himself say that the Jesuits have this letter.”