The Life of Hugo Grotius: With Brief Minutes of the Civil, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of the NetherlandsButler, Charles
History
The Life of Hugo Grotius: With Brief Minutes of the Civil, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of the Netherlands
Butler, Charles
Grotius, Hugo, 1583-1645; Netherlands -- History
The word Transubstantiation, he seemed willing to give up, if the Roman
Catholic doctrine, intended to be expressed by it, were retained. He
proposed, that communion under both kinds, or under bread alone, should
be left, to the discretion of the different churches, and consented,
that persons in holy orders should retain their state, with such
provisions, as would place the validity of their ordination, beyond
exception. The marriage of priests, in the countries, in which such
marriages were allowed, and the recitation of the divine service in the
vulgar tongue, he allowed; and intimated that no difficulty would be
found in the ultimate settlement of the doctrine, respecting purgatory,
indulgences, the veneration of saints, relics, or images. He seems to
have thought, that the Pope can exercise, no immediate jurisdiction,
within the dioceses of bishops, and that his primacy invested him, with
no more than a general conservation, of the deposit of the faith, a
right to enforce, the observance of the sacred canons, and the general
maintenance of discipline. He allowed, in general terms, that there was
little substantially wrong, in the discipline of the Church of England;
he deprecated all discussion, on the original merit of reformation, and
he professed to see no use in the Pope's intervention, till the basis of
the negotiation, should be settled.
The answer of the archbishop, was not very explicit. It is evident from
it, that he thought, the quarrels on Jansenism, had alienated the
Jansenists and their adherents, from the Pope, much more, than they had
done, in reality. He was willing to concede, to the Pope, a primacy of
rank and honour, but would by no means allow him, a primacy of
jurisdiction, or any primacy, by divine right. On the other points, he
seemed to have thought, that they might come to an agreement, on what
they should declare, to be the fundamental doctrine of the churches, and
adopt, on every other point of doctrine, a general system, of christian
toleration.
The correspondence, which is very interesting, may be seen, in the last
volume of the English translation, of Doctor Mosheim's Ecclesiastical
History. To facilitate, the accomplishment of the object of it, Doctor
Courayer, published his celebrated treatise, on _the Validity of English
Ordinations_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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