One of the principal grounds on which they went, was, as we have already seen, his silence concerning the Trinity, in his book Of the truth of the Christian religion:  but he has justified his method in such a manner, that this objection cannot be sustained by an equitable judge:  he seems to have foreseen it; for, writing to his brother from his prison at Louvestein whilst he was composing this treatise in Dutch verse, “My intention, he says, is not to explain the doctrines of Christianity, but to make the profane, the Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans acknowledge the truth of the Christian religion, and afterwards have recourse to our sacred books to be informed of its tenets.  The Trinity, and Christ’s divinity could not be introduced into my arguments; for these doctrines will never bring over unbelievers to the Christian faith, and those who attempt to demonstrate them by other arguments than such as are drawn from scripture, absolutely lose their labour:  but the authority of the scriptures being once established, these doctrines ought to be held proved.”  He omitted therefore all mention of these points, not because he disbelieved them, but because he judged it more proper to prove first the divinity of the sacred books, and the mission of Christ:  and, as we have already observed, the same method has been followed by the most successful writers on the Truth of Christianity.

He has been much reproached with his letter to Crellius.  Grotius had written against Socinus, and Crellius, to vindicate his master, answered Grotius with a politeness and good-breeding seldom found in a polemical divine.  Grotius thought it his duty to reply to him, and the measures he kept with this adversary were looked on by his enemies as a betraying of the truth.  Here follows the letter, which has been so much talked of.  “I was so far from being offended, most learned Crellius, with your book against mine that I inwardly thanked you at that time, and now do it by this letter, first, for treating me with so much civility, that the only thing I have left to complain of is your complimenting me in some places too much:  next for informing me of many very useful and entertaining things, and exciting me by your example, to examine thoroughly into the sense of the sacred scriptures:  you judge very rightly of me, that I bear no ill-will to any one who differs from me, without prejudice to religion; nor decline the friendship of any good man.  I have found in your book of the True Religion, which I have already gone through, and shall read again, many judicious remarks:  and I congratulate the present age, that there are men in it who make religion consist, not so much in subtle controversies as in amendment of life and a continual progress in holiness.  God grant that my writings may produce these sentiments in the minds of my readers:  I should then think my life not spent in vain.  The treatise on the truth of the Christian religion I wrote more for my