It is universally known that these books in Ana are of little authority.  We must be informed of all the circumstances of this pretended conversation before we can determine Grotius’s meaning:  one thing is certain, that he has proved the immortality of the soul by arguments drawn from reason in his treatise On the Truth of the Christian Religion[702].

FOOTNOTES: 

[685] Theological works.

[686] Ep. 20. p. 7.

[687] Ep. 14. p. 5.  See also Oper.  Theol. t. 3. p. 99.

[688] Ep. 556. p. 883.

[689] Ep. 502. p. 884.

[690] Ep. 1564. p. 708.

[691] These expressions afterwards gave occasion to the accusations of Socinianism brought against Grotius.

[692] Ep. 440. p. 880.

[693] Ep. 135. p. 794.

[694] Ep. 880. p. 387.

[695] Ep. 1096. p. 492.

[696] Menag. t. 2 p. 298.

[697] Ep. 19. p. 760.

[698] Patiniana, p. 18.

[699] Vind.  Grot. p. 557.

[700] Animad.  Phil. & Hist.  Crenii, part. 10. p. 113.

[701] T. 1. p. 168.

[702] L. 1.  S. 23.

XXV.  If Grotius’s merit stirred up envy, and if his projects of reconciliation procured him hatred, the more irreconcilable as it was founded on a religious pretext, he had also a great number of friends and judicious persons for him, who did justice to his virtue and his talents.  We shall not enter into a detail of all the testimonies in his favour, they would fill a large volume:  we shall confine ourselves to the Elogiums of those whose suffrages deserve most attention.  We have already seen, that even when a boy he was highly extolled by the greatest men of his age.  Isaac Pontanus, Meursius, James Gillot, Barlaeus, John Dousa, M. de Thou, the great Scaliger, Casaubon, Vossius, Lipsius, Baudius, celebrated his childhood.  He justified the great hopes that were so early conceived of him, and the praises he received were an additional motive to merit the public esteem.  Baudius compared him to Scaliger[703], who, he said, was his favourite author.  This he wrote on the third of March, 1606, when Grotius was yet much under age.  In a scazon, written in his praise, he calls him [704]a great, an admirable, and an original man.  “If any, says he in a letter dated October 8, 1607[705], can form a just notion of Grotius’s merit, which exceeds all that can be said of it, I am one; and I think him equal to any office.  Ignorant people, who judge of virtue by years and a long beard, may object to him his youth; but in my opinion that makes for him, since in his earliest youth he possesses the prudence and ripeness of understanding of the most aged.”