As the religion of Grotius was a problem to many, Menâge wrote the following Epigram upon it: the sense of it is, that-- "As many sects claimed the religion of Grotius, as the towns, which contended for the birth of Homer." _Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenæ, Siderei certant vatis de patriâ Homeri: Grotiadæ certant de religione, Socinus, Arrius, Arminius, Calvinus, Roma, Lutherus_. XII. 3. _Grotius's Project of Religious Pacification._ A wish for religious peace among Christians grew with the growth and strengthened with the strength of Grotius. It was known, before his imprisonment at Louvestein, that he entertained these sentiments: he avows them in the dedication to Lewis XIII. of his treatise _de Jure Belli et Pacis_. "I shall never cease," he says in a letter to his brother,[061] "to use my utmost endeavours for establishing peace among Christians; And, if I should not succeed, it will be honourable to die in such an enterprise." "I am not the only one, who has conceived such projects," he writes in another letter to his brother:[062] "Erasmus, Cassander; Wicelius and Casaubon had the same design. La Meletiere is employed at present in it. Cardinal de Richelieu declares that he will protect the coalition; and he is such a fortunate man, that he never undertakes any thing, in which he does not succeed. If there were no hopes of success at present, ought we not to sow the seed, which may he useful to posterity?[063] Even if we should only diminish the mutual hatred among Christians, and render them more sociable, would not this be worth purchasing at the price of some labour and reproaches?"[064] Grotius expressed himself in similar terms to Baron Oxenstiern: Surely it is the true language of the Gospel. [Sidenote: CHAP. XII.] In the first appendix to this work,--we shall insert, an account "of the Formularies, Confessions of Faith, and Symbolic Books, of the Roman Catholic, Greek, and principal Protestant churches:"-- In the second appendix,--we shall insert an account of the principal attempts made, since the Reformation, for the re-union of Christians.--The former is abridged from the "Historical and Literary Account of the Confessions of Faith," which was formerly published by the present writer;--the second is an essay appended to that work:--both have been before referred to in the present publication. [Sidenote: XII. 3. His Project of Religious Pacification.]