HERMAN WITS (or, as he is commonly called Witsius) was descended from reputable parents. His father, Nicholaus Wits, was a gentleman universally esteemed by his fellow-citizens at Enkhuysen, to whom he endeared himself by his fidelity, modesty, justice, benevolence, and unaffected piety in every character he sustained, either in the church or in the city; for in the former he was first a deacon, and afterwards a ruling elder, and treasurer in the latter. His mother was Joanna, a gentlewoman of great piety and prudence, the daughter of Herman Gerhard; who, after many dangers and distresses, obtained a calm and secure settlement in the church at Enkhuysen; where he preached the gospel, for upwards of thirty years, with great reputation; and such was the affection he bore to his VOL. I.

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church, that he rejected the most profitable offers that were made to him.

The parents of our WITSIUS, having vowed to devote a child to the ministry, did, upon the birth of this son, call him after his grandfather, praying that in Herman the grandsone, might be revived the spirit of the grandfather; and that, endued with equal, if not superior talents, he might imitate his example.

HERMAN WITSIUS was born on the 12th of February, 1636, at Enkhuysen, a town of West Friesland; one of the first that threw off the Spanish yoke, asserted their own liberty, and once enlightened with the truths of the gospel, retained the purity of worship ever after, and, in the very worst times of Arminianism, continued, above many, stedfast in the faith. And though it was a place noted for trade and navigation, yet it produced men famous in every branch of literature. So that Witsius, even in his native place, had illustrious patterns to copy after.

The care which these pious parents took of young Wilsius during his tender infancy, was not intermitted as he began to grow; for, being still mindful of their vow, they brought him up in a very pious manner, instructing him in the principles and precepts of religion and Christian piety. In his sixth year they sent him to the public school of the town, to learn the rudiments of the Latin tongue: from which, after spending three years, and being advanced to the highest form there, his uncle by the mother, Peter Gerhard, took him under his own private and domestic tuition; a person well skilled in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and philosophy. But his principal study had been Divinity. This man, then disengaged from all public business, and being as fond of his nephew as if he had been his own son, taught him with that assiduity, that, before he was fifteen, he made no small proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and acquired such knowledge in logic and other parts of philosophy, that, when he was afterwards removed to the university, he could study without a master. At the same time he learned the

ethic compendiums of Wallaus and Burgersdicius, with so much care, as to be able to repeat most of the sentences, very frequent in Burgersdicius, from the ancients, whether Greek or Latin. He also perused his elements of physics, and dipped a little into metaphysical subtilties; and committed to memory most of the theological definitions and distinctions from Wendelin. As his uncle was a man of exemplary piety, and was wont to apply almost to every common occurrence of life, some striking passages of both testaments, which he often repeated, either in Hebrew or Greek, while rising, dressing, walking, studying, or otherwise employed; so, by his example and admonitions, he stirred up his nephew to the same practice. Whence it was, that at those tender years he had rendered familiar to himself many entire passages from the Hebrew and Greek Testament, which he was far from forgetting when more advanced in life.

Being thus formed by a private education, in 1651, and the fifteenth year of his age, it was resolved to send him to some university. Utrecht was pitched upon, being furnished with men very eminent in every branch of literature, with a considerable concourse of students, and an extraordinary strictness of discipline. What principally recommended it, were the famous divines, Gisbert Voetius, Charles Maatsius, and John Hoornbeeckius, all of them great names, and ornaments in their day. Being therefore received into that university, he was, for metaphysics, put under the direction of Paul Voetius, then professor of philosophy; and... being, moreover, much taken with the study of the Oriental languages, he closely attended on the celebrated John Leusden, who taught those languages with incredible dexterity; and under him he construed almost the whole Hebrew text, as also the commentaries of Solomon Iarchi, Aben Ezra, and Kimchi on Hosea, and the Chaldee paraphrase of Jonathan on Isaiah, and of Onkelos on a part of the Pentateuch. Moreover, under the same master, he just touched on the mysteries of the Masora, and the barbarous diction of the

Talmud; namely the parts published by John Cocceius, under the title of Sanhedrin and Maccoth, and by Constantine Lempereur, under that of Babha Bathra: under the same master he learned the elements of the Syric and Arabic languages; which last, however, he afterwards less cultivated than the others. What proficiency he made in the Hebrew, appeared from a public specimen he gave, at the instigation of Leusden, of a well-written Hebrew oration about the Messias of the Jews and Christians, in 1654. But though almost quite swallowed up in those studies, he by no means neglected the study of divinity, to which he knew all the others were only subservient; but in that sublime science he diligently used, as masters, the greatest men, and best seen in the sacred scriptures, whose most laudable memory no lapse of time shall ever be able to obliterate; namely, Gisbert, Voetius, John Hoornbeeckius, Gaulterus Bruinius, and Andrew Essenius. By whose instructions, together with his own extraordinary application, and true piety towards God, what proficiency he made, the reader may easily judge for himself. However, he had a mind to see Groningen, to have the benefit of hearing the famous Samuel Maresius: whither he went in 1654, after the summervacation; chiefly applying to divinity: under whose direction he made exercises in French, by which he gave so much satisfaction to this great man, that, notwithstanding his many avocations, he deigned to correct and purge those declamations of Witsius from their solecisms and other improprieties, before they were recited in the college. Having thus spent a year at Groningen, and obtained an honorable testimonial from the theological faculty, he next turned his thoughts to Lyden. But the plague then raging there, he resolved to return to Utrecht, in order to build farther on the foundation he had there so happily laid: and, therefore, he not only carefully heard the professors in divinity at this time, as before, both in public and pri vate, but cultivated a peculiar familiarity with the Very Reverend Justus van den Bogardt, whose piety, pru

dence, and admirable endowments he had such a value for, that he imagined, perhaps from youthful inexperience, no preacher equal to him. From his sermons, conversation, and example, he learned the deeper mysteries of the kingdon of God, and of mystical and spiritual Christianity. From him he understood how great the difference is between any superficial knowledge, which scholastic exercises, books learnedly written, and a close application, may procure to minds quite destitute of sanctification; and that heavenly wisdom, which is acquired by meditation, prayer, love, familiar converse with God, and by the very relish and experience of spiritual things; which proceeding from the Spirit of God, internally illuminating, convincing persuading, and sealing, gloriously transforms the whole man into the most holy image of Christ. In a word, he owned, that by means of this holy person he was introduced by the Lord Jesus to his most secret recesses, while, before, he too much and too fondly pleased himself in tarrying in the porch; and there, at length, learned, disclaiming all vain presumption of science, humbly to sit down at the feet of the heavenly Master, and receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child. But that it may not be thought, he so applied to the forming of his mind to piety, as to neglect for the future all academical studies, the theses he wrote on the Sacred Trinity, against the Jews, from their own writings, may, and ought to be, a proof to the contrary; and which he published in the month of October 1655, to be disputed under the moderation of the famous Leusden; which, though warmly attacked by the most experienced academicians, yet the moderator thought the respondent acquitted himself so well, as to supercede his interposition on any account and when, according to custom, he returned solemn thanks to the moderator for his trouble, this last very politely and truly made answer, he had stood in no need of his help.

The time now seemed to require, that our Witsius, very famous at two universities, should be employed