he taught philosophy, literature, and Hebrew in the Remonstrant seminary. At the death of his close friend, the leading Dutch Remonstrant theologian Philip v. Limborch (1633–1712), Le Clerc was also appointed to the chair of church history. Befriended by John Locke (whom he met during the English thinker’s exile in the United Provinces between 1683 and 1688), he established himself as a key figure of the European republic of letters through his work as a biblical scholar, theologian, and especially as editor of one of the learned journals central to contemporary intellectual life, the Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique (26 volumes, 1686–1694, 1718), continued as Bibliothèque Choisie (28 volumes, 1703–1713, 1718), and then Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne (29 volumes, 1714–1727, 1730).
Le Clerc’s first edition of Grotius’s De Veritate Religionis Christianae, published in 1709, supplemented the original work in three respects: it corrected numerous mistakes, especially in quotations from ancient sources; it provided a series of notes in addition to those of Grotius; and it subjoined an additional book to the six of Grotius’s original work. The new book was devoted to the question of which Christian church should be chosen, and in it Le Clerc advanced two main conclusions which were in line with Grotius’s views but were not as explicit in De Veritate as Le Clerc thought necessary. First, nothing else ought to be imposed on Christians aside from what they can gather from the New Testament; and second, the purest Christian doctrine is professed by those who propose as necessary to be believed only those things on which Christians agree.
Le Clerc’s edition, including his “seventh book,” was translated into English in 1711 by John Clarke senior (1682–1757). Brother of Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) and an accomplished mathematician, John Clarke was a clergyman who served as chaplain to the king and (from 1728) as dean of Salisbury.
In 1718 Le Clerc published a second, revised edition, on the basis of which Clarke published his second English edition in 1719, followed by a third in 1729.
The third and definitive Latin edition by Le Clerc appeared in The Hague in 1724. It included an “eighth book” in which Le Clerc argued against those who “imagine it to be quite indifferent, what Party of Christians we really join ourselves with, or indeed only profess to join ourselves
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with.”16 While “we ought not hastily to condemn” those who have different religious beliefs, the hypocrisy of those who join a certain religious denomination against their “own Conscience” is never permissible.17 The 1724 edition served as a basis for Clarke’s fourth English edition, which appeared in London in 1743 and included Le Clerc’s “eighth book.”
Especially in the English-speaking world, the two books added by Le Clerc became classic documents in their own right, alongside the original work by Grotius. Testimony to this are the seventeen reprints of Clarke’s definitive English edition of 1743. In its preface, Clarke endorsed the view, shared by Grotius and Le Clerc, that the way to end fighting among Christians was to return to sola Scriptura, in which all the articles of faith necessary for salvation are clearly contained: “the only Remedy that can heal these Divisions amongst Christians … is, in one Word, making the Scripture the only Rule of Faith. Whatever is necessary for a Christian to believe, in order to everlasting Salvation, is there declared.”18
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The impetuous flood of editions of Grotius’s De Veritate shrinks to a trickle from 1950 onward. A facsimile reprint of the first English translation (London, 1632; probably based on the Leiden Latin edition of 1629) was published in Amsterdam and New York in 1971. An Italian translation by Fiorella Pintacuda De Michelis—based on the text of De Veritate in Grotius’s Opera omnia theologica (Amsterdam, 1679) but excluding the extensive notes added by Grotius in 1640—appeared in 1973. Finally, a photographic reproduction of the 1818 edition of John Clarke’s translation was published in 2004.
The current edition presents John Clarke’s English translation of 1743 of Jean Le Clerc’s definitive Latin edition of 1724. It does not attempt to provide a critical edition of a text with so many and such complex layers of revisions, additions, and corrections by Grotius, Le Clerc, and Clarke. Its aim is much more modest: namely, to help the modern reader appreciate a classic work that had a massive impact on western culture. This aim is pursued in the “Authors and Works Cited by Grotius and Le Clerc” (pp. 299–332), via the identification of the authors and works mentioned by Grotius and Le Clerc in their countless allusions and more or less implicit references, and in explanatory annotations to the text itself. Given the already formidable apparatus of notes by Grotius, Le Clerc, and occasionally Clarke, I have kept my own annotations to a minimum. John Clarke’s translation, although far from blameless, has been treated as a period piece in its own right. I have therefore limited my interventions to silently correcting only clear typographical errors.
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The bulk of the work on this edition was done during a period of research leave for which I am grateful to King’s College London. It is a pleasure to record my thanks also to Hamilton Bryson, Noel Malcolm, Maria Grazia and Mario Sina, M. A. Stewart, Stefania Tutino, and Joanna Weinberg for helping me with the identification of some of the most obscure authors and works cited by Grotius and Le Clerc. In this challenging task Richard Hewitt’s “Catalogus Librorum a Grotio et Clerico Laudatorum,” appended to the edition of Grotius’s De Veritate Religionis Christianae published in Oxford in 1807, has provided a valuable starting point. Thank you to Paul Dimmock for checking Hebrew and Ancient Greek words. I am greatly indebted to Knud Haakonssen for his support over the years and for his advice as the general editor of the series of which this volume is part. Thanks are also due to Laura Goetz and Diana Francoeur of Liberty Fund, for being gracious and competent editors, and to the library of Harris Manchester College (Oxford) for allowing me to consult the 1743 edition. As always, the deepest debt of all is to my family. My husband, Howard Hotson, has been my constant intellectual companion, sharing the pleasure of this work and helping me to endure its frustrations when Grotius and Le Clerc’s elusive citations proved difficult to track down. They prompted our son John, however, to try his hand at scholarly work. Our daughters, Sophia and Francesca, might or might not try some other time.
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To John
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THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
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IN
SIX BOOKS
BY
