Universal Peace was not to receive thus early the countenance of Government. Meanwhile private efforts began to multiply. Grotius, in his wonderful work on "The Rights of War and Peace," while lavishing learning and genius on the Arbitrament of War, bears testimony in favor of a more rational tribunal. His virtuous nature, wishing to save mankind from the scourge of War, foreshadowed an Amphictyonic Council. "It would be useful, and in some sort necessary," he says,--in language which, if carried out practically, would sweep away the War System and all the _Laws of War_,--"to have Congresses of the Christian Powers, where differences might be determined by the judgment of those not interested in them, and means found to constrain parties into acceptance of peace on just conditions."[326] To the discredit of his age, these moderate words, so much in harmony with his other effort for the union of Christian sects, were derided, and the eminent expounder was denounced as rash, visionary, and impracticable. The sentiment in which they had their origin found other forms of utterance. Before the close of the seventeenth century, Nicole, the friend of Pascal, belonging to the fellowship of Port-Royal, and one of the highest names in the Church of France, gave to the world a brief "Treatise on the Means of preserving Peace among Men,"[327] which Voltaire, with exaggerated praise, terms "a masterpiece, to which nothing equal has been left to us by Antiquity." Next appeared a little book, which is now a bibliographical curiosity, entitled "The New Cineas,"[328]--after the pacific adviser of Pyrrhus, the warrior king of Epirus,--where the humane author counsels sovereigns to govern in Peace, submitting their differences to an established tribunal. In Germany, at the close of the seventeenth century, as we learn from Leibnitz, who mentions the preceding authority also, a retired general, who had commanded armies, the Land-grave Ernest of Hesse Rhinfels, in a work entitled "The Discreet Catholic," suggested a plan for Perpetual Peace by means of a tribunal established by associate sovereigns.[329] England testified also by William Penn, who adopted and enforced what he called the "great design" of Henry the Fourth. In a work entitled "An Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe," the enlightened Quaker proposed a Diet, or Sovereign Assembly, into which the princes of Europe should enter, as men enter into society, for the love of peace and order,--that its object should be justice, and that all differences not terminated by embassies should be brought before this tribunal, whose judgment should be so far binding, that, in the event of contumacy, it should be enforced by the united powers.[330] Thus, by writings, as also by illustrious example in Pennsylvania, did Penn show himself the friend of Peace. [326] De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Lib. II. cap. 28, § 8.