that if some people, from a wrong judgment,
bestow improper epithets on this virtue and turn it into ridicule; these
wrong judgments change not the nature of the thing, nor lessen its real
value. This has not only been acknowledged by the first Christians, but
by the ancient Philosophers, who, as we have elsewhere shewn, ascribed
an impatient resentment of insults to meanness of soul. Should any one
even publish things capable of hurting us with good men, that will not
authorise us to kill him. If there are authors who maintain the
contrary, it is an erroneous opinion which clasheth even with the
principles of natural law: for killing the person who attacks our
reputation is a bad way of defending it." Thus Grotius thought in his
best days. We have enlarged on this head, to shew into what
contradiction, and excess of weakness, great men may fall. William
Grotius was no doubt astonished at his brother's vivacity, and probably
gave him some check for it; for Grotius afterwards writes to him, "What
I wrote to you, relating to my son and Blondius, I did it not because I
approved of such things, but because that or something worse might
happen."

FOOTNOTES:

[640] Huetiana, S. 16. p. 46.

[641] M. Huet is mistaken: it was not Rivetus whom Grotius meant by this
verse of Catullus, but Laet.

[642] See _Votum pro pace_, p. 744.

[643] Ep. 534. A matris visceribus.

[644] Ep. 1471. p. 666.

[645] Ep 383. p. 804.

[646] Ep. 801. p. 357.

[647] Ep. 835. p 367.

[648] Ep. 411. p. 871.

[649] Ep. 477. p. 890.

[650] Ep. 487. p. 894.

[651] Ep. 491. p. 895. & 1478. p. 668.

[652] Ep. 494. p. 896.

[653] Ep. praes. vir. p. 251.

[654] Ep. 1706. p. 736.

[655] Ep. 60. p. 772.

[656] Ep. 444. p. 165.

[657] Ep. 678. p. 960.

[658] Ep. 1538. p. 696. & 573. p. 926.

[659] Ep. 496. p. 897.

[660] Ep. 551. p. 922.

[661] Ep. 1533. p. 696.

[662] Ep. 528. p. 400.

[663] Ep. 610. p. 938.

[664] Ep. 530. p. 911.

[665] Ep. 592. p. 934.

[666] Ep. 1569. p. 708. See also Ep. 1576. p. 710.

[667] P. 284.

[668] L. 3. ep. 9. p. 278.

[669] Ep. 1478. p. 668.

[670] Ep. 595. p. 929.

[671] Ep. 637. p. 948.

[672] Ep. 260. p. 88. Ep. 265. p. 99. & 368. p. 134.

[673] Ep. 525. p. 908.

[674] Ep. 42. p. 41.

[675] Ep. 83. p. 84.

[676] Ep. 579. p. 930.

[677] Ep. 111. p. 110.

[678] Ep. p. 203.

[679] Cent. 2. p. 448.

[680] See a letter from Henry Villeneuve, p. 345, after the treatise