17. It appears to me, nevertheless, that Grotius was very far from having truly subjected his understanding to the church of Rome. The whole bent of his mind was to effect an exterior union among Christians; and for this end he did not hesitate to recommend equivocal senses of words, convenient explanations, and respectful silence. Listening attentively, if I may be allowed such a metaphor, we hear the chaunt of the Æsculapian cock in all he has written for the catholic church. He first took up his reverence for antiquity, because he found antiquity unfavourable to the doctrine of Calvin. His antipathy to this reformer and to his followers led him on to an admiration of the episcopal succession, the organized hierarchy, the ceremonial and liturgical institutions, the high notions of sacramental rites, which he found in the ancient church, and which Luther and Zuingle had cast away. He became imbued with the notion of unity as essential to the catholic church; but he never seems to have gone the length of abandoning his own judgment, or of asserting any positive infallibility to the decrees of man. For it is manifest that, if the councils of Nice or of Trent were truly inspired, it would be our business to inquire what they meant themselves, not to put the most convenient interpretations, nor to search out for some author or another who may have strained their language to our own opinion. The precedent of Grotius, therefore, will not serve those who endeavour to bind the reason of the enlightened part of mankind, which he respected like his own. Two predominant ideas seem to have swayed the mind of this great man in the very gradual transition we have indicated; one, his extreme reverence for antiquity and for the consent of the catholic church; the other, his Erastian principles as to the authority of the civil magistrate in matters of religion. Both conspired to give him an abhorrence of the ‘liberty of prophesying,’ the right of private men to promulgate tenets inconsistent with established faith. In friendly conversation or correspondence, even perhaps; with due reserve, in Latin writings, much might be indulged to the learned, room was to be found for an Erasmus and a Cassander; or, if they would themselves consent, for an Episcopius and a Wytenbogart, at least for a Montagu and a Laud; but no pretext was ever to justify a separation. The scheme of Grotius is, in a modified degree, much the same as that of Hobbes. |Calixtus.|