AI Translation · Gisbertus Voetius
Voetius’s landmark polemic against Roman Catholicism, translated into English for the first time. The Latin original and AI translation appear side by side below.
No prior English translation exists. Translated by Claude Sonnet from the 1635 Utrecht edition (Royal Library of the Netherlands, KB digitization).
Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), professor of theology at Utrecht and the leading figure of Dutch Further Reformation (Nadere Reformatie), published Desperata Causa Papatus in 1635 as a direct response to Cornelius Jansenius’s Alexipharmacum (1630). The title is polemical: “The Desperate Cause of the Papacy.”
The work is structured in two sections. Section I demolishes Jansenius’s apologetic arguments for Rome on grounds of apostasy, idolatry, and the abandonment of Scripture. Section II defends the legitimacy of Reformed church calling and ministry against the charge that the Reformers had no valid vocation—one of the central ecclesiological debates of the seventeenth century.
At 770 pages in the original octavo, it is one of Voetius’s most substantial early works. Despite his enormous influence on Dutch and international Reformed orthodoxy, virtually none of his Latin writings have been translated into English. The passages below offer the first English access to this text.
Primo ipſius cauſæ & totius controverſiæ (ut ipſe loquitur) cardinem attingere non auſus, quamvis opportune importune provocatus, vel ſtimulatus. Eſt autem ille cardo Apoſtaſia & Idololatria Papatus (ut nos loquimur) ſeu Veritas, Antiquitas, Catholicismus, Succeſſio Papatus, ut adverſarii prætendunt.
Tertio, a fidei & religionis principio infallibili, Sacra ſcilicet Scriptura fugit ad alia quæcunque; non quod robur aut præſidium cauſæ ibi inveniat, ſed quod tutius, ſaltem diutius poſt illa tanquam carecta delitiſcere ſe putat. Nihil magis horret, nihil magis averſatur quam Scripturarum membranas & tenebras (ut blafpheme eas appellat.) Requiem in omnibus quærit, & nufquam invenit.
First, he did not dare to touch upon the very cause and hinge of the entire controversy (as he himself says), however much he was opportunely and importunately provoked or challenged. Now that hinge is the Apostasy and Idolatry of the Papacy (as we speak), or Truth, Antiquity, Catholicism, Succession of the Papacy, as the adversaries pretend.
Third, fleeing from the infallible principle of faith and religion—namely, Sacred Scripture—it flees to any other sources whatsoever; not because it finds strength or defense in its cause there, but because it thinks it can hide more safely, or at least longer, behind those things as if behind a fortress. It dreads nothing more, it abhors nothing more than the parchments and darkness of the Scriptures (as it blasphemously calls them). It seeks rest in all things, and finds it nowhere.
Reformati non credunt, abſque vocatione licere alicui miniſterium uſurpare. Illa diſſertatio ſatis prolixa de vocatione tota eſt umbratica & ὑποθετική, parergis & ineptis quibuſdam probationibus cum intertextis caninis Rhetoricationibus turgens, ſubnixa puris putis calumniis ac falſis hypotheſibus.
Falſæ illæ hypotheſes duùm ſunt generum, vel quas ipſe nobis per calumniam affingit, vel quas ipſe ex ſuo ſeu Romano ſenſu ſibi fingit, ſumit, præſupponit, ac diſputationi ſuæ ſubſternit, ſed falſo, ſed abſque omni probatione.
The Reformed do not believe that anyone may usurp the ministry without a calling. That rather lengthy dissertation on calling is entirely umbratic and hypothetical, swelling with certain marginal and inept proofs along with woven-in canine rhetorications, supported by pure slanders and false hypotheses.
Those false hypotheses are of two kinds: either those which he slanderously attributes to us, or those which he himself devises from his own or Roman understanding, adopts, presupposes, and underlies his disputation with—but falsely, and without any proof.
Fruſtra exceptionem talem adhibeo, contra hæreticos qui erroribus, idololatriæ & vitiis ſuis infamis, qualis erat Clerus Papalis tempore Lutheri, & etiamnunc eſt. Quia hac exceptione, etiamſi in dubium vocetur perſona monitoris, ſeu Reformatoris Lutheri aut ſimilis, nihil tamen juvatur reus.
Si enim alteri maculam aliquam aſpergat, hæret nihilominus in ſuo luto; & deberet plebs ab illo ſecedere, etiamſi ad hunc accedere nollet.
I hold this exception to be futile against heretics who are ensnared by errors, idolatry, and vices, such as was the Papal Clergy in Luther’s time, and still is today. For by this exception, even if the person of the admonisher or Reformer—whether Luther or someone similar—is called into doubt, nevertheless the accused gains nothing.
For if he casts some stain upon another, he nonetheless remains in his own filth; and the people ought to withdraw from him, even if they were unwilling to approach this other one.
1,192 chunks · first English translation · searchable across the full Reformed corpus
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