_Of
the truth of the Christian religion_, by M. Le Clerc.

[681] Osiander. Vind. Grot. p. 464.

[682] Ep. 333. p. 119.

[683] Ep. 572. p. 928.

[684] L. 2. c. 1.

XXIV. The hatred, which his projects of reconciliation drew upon him,
contributed to the revival of the invidious accusation of Socinianism,
which had been formerly laid against him: they founded it on his silence
concerning the Trinity in his treatise _Of the truth of the Christian
religion_, on his praises of Crellius, his connection with the
Socinians, and, in fine, on his setting aside, or weakening several
passages which established Christ's divinity, particularly that in which
it is said, that Christ was before Abraham; Grotius explaining it with
the Socinians of Christ's existence in the eternal decrees of God.

It was not only his declared enemies, such as Desmarets, Osiander, and
many others, that wanted to make him pass for a Socinian: some
celebrated Roman Catholics, among whom we may number M. Bossuet,
maintained that he was a favourer of Socinianism.

It is true he did not always express himself with the greatest
exactness, and sometimes enlarged more on the necessity of good works,
than on that of regulating our faith according to the decisions of the
Church[685]: but besides that his expressions are susceptible of a
favourable sense, it is evident that there are several tenets, the
belief of which he thought necessary for salvation: this manifestly
appears from the detail he enters into concerning these doctrines in his
later works.

If even some mistakes have escaped him, of which the Socinians might
take advantage, these will not authorise us to accuse him of being a
favourer of that heresy. We know that never any carried a love to truth,
or an abhorrence of falsehood, farther than he did: now he always
expressed the greatest aversion to Socinianism: he writes to Gerard
Vossius[686], in 1613, that there was no body of any authority in the
republic, who held not Socinianism in abhorrence. He wrote against
Socinus the book entitled _A defence of the Catholic faith concerning
Christ's satisfaction against Faustus Socinus of Siena_, in which he
proves that there is nothing contrary to justice in Christ's suffering,
though innocent, for offenders; that even the Pagans believed that God
punished the crimes of the fathers on the sons; and that, in the early
ages of the world, the innocent children were often punished with the
guilty fath