Abstract

_ Source: _Volume 38, Issue 1, pp 46 - 69 Most readers believe Grotius failed to refute Socinus in _De satisfactione_. This article argues that Grotius’s failure was one of reception rather than argument. It is possible to read _De satisfactione_ as Grotius adverted: a genuine concept of satisfaction, and a defence of the catholic faith. Grotius does reject a necessitarian identical satisfaction, in which a repayment is equal to a debt, but like Aquinas, he embraces a teleological equivalent satisfaction, in which a punishment fits a crime. Yet Grotius’s catholic theory was predestined not to persuade a wartime Continental audience whose centre had not held and which sought definitive distinctions from the Roman church. His attempt to forge a broad middle way would succeed only later in Britain.