c CUNYB/Clarke December, :
Once More into Battle First Meditation that reads: ‘Therefore I shall suppose not that God,
who is the source of truth, but some evil mind who is all powerful and
cunning, has devoted all their energies to deceiving me’ (v.and vii.).
Descartes refers, in passing, to a similar calumny to which he had been
subjected from another hostile source, namely Voetius (v.), who accused
him of atheism merely because he had argued against atheists. He demands
the freedom of conscience that he should enjoy in the United Provinces.
He has been accused of serious crimes by two prominent members of the
Calvinist Church, the professor of theology at Leiden and the dean of the
Statencollege. The curators need not get involved in any subtle theological
disputes, for the issue he wishes to put before them is not a question of
doctrine but a question of fact: do the words about which the theologians
complained appear in any of his writings?
The real source of Descartes’ concern was his fear of a Calvinist inqui-
sition, of being denounced to a synod of Calvinist theologians who would
almost certainly support the charges brought against him, and of being
handed over subsequently to the magistrates or a civil court. He expressed
these fears to Princess Elizabeth a week after writing to Leiden University.
‘I am told that the theologians wish to be judges, that is, to subject me
to a more severe inquisition than was ever seen in Spain, and to turn me
into an enemy of their religion’ (v.). He had been advised by friends
in Leiden to appeal to the French ambassador and to the authority of
theStadtholder,ashehad done previously to protect himself against the
onslaught from Utrecht. However, he told Elizabeth, on this occasion,
that he would simply appeal to the good judgment of the Leiden Uni-
versity curators. In fact, he had no sooner sent this letter to Elizabeth
than he changed his mind again. Prince Frederik Hendrik had died on
March, and had been succeeded by his son, Prince William.
Unfortunately, the French ambassador, La Thuillerie, was absent at this
time, and Descartes wrote instead to Abel Servien, who temporarily rep-
resented the French crown in the United Provinces from January to July
. Servien, however, was posted there with a very specific mission: to
persuade the United Provinces not to make a separate peace agreement
with Spain without consulting their French allies. He was therefore much
too busy to bother with relatively minor theological disputes that involved
oneofhis countrymen who lived in the far north of Holland, and to protect
the freedom of conscience of a French Catholic who had formerly served in
the Dutch army.