celebrated scholar, Isaac Casaubon, who expressed the highest opinion of the great Dutchman in a letter written in April, 1613. He says:
I cannot say how happy I esteem myself in having seen
so much of one so truly great as Grotius. A wonderful
man! This I knew him to be before I had seen him; but
the rare excellence of that divine genius no one can sufficiently
feel who does not see his face and hear him speak.
Probity is stamped on his features; his conversation savors
of true piety and profound learning. It is not only
upon me that he has made this impression; all the pious
and learned to whom he has been introduced here have
felt the same towards him; the King especially so.
Grotius returned to his country, where serious
trouble awaited him. The cause of it all was, to
begin with, a religious squabble between two sects,
the one followers of Arminius, who believed in free-will,
the other followers of Gomarus, who believed in
predestination. This senseless dispute on a question
which can never be settled—that is to say, whether
man is free to shape his own destiny or whether his
acts are all fated beforehand by God—was only an
excuse for a quarrel between the more bigoted and
intolerant religious sects who sided with Gomarus and
the freer and more broadminded who followed Arminius.
The whole country was convulsed by the controversy.
The Arminians drew up a Remonstrance,
which was answered by a Counter Remonstrance, and
the Parliament issued an Edict of Pacification, urg-
