The Truth of the Christian Religion
Hugo Grotius, De Veritate Religionis Christianae (1627), trans. Clarke (1743)
Hugo Grotius — Dutch jurist, sentenced to life imprisonment for his politics, smuggled out of Loevestein Castle in a book chest by his own wife
A lawyer’s case, built for a stranger who has never heard the claim before and has every reason to doubt it.
- Catch rate
- 62 / 255
- Base research
- 262
- Stat total
- 358
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Short on purpose. Grotius wrote it in Latin verse first, for Dutch sailors to carry into ports where nobody had heard of Christ, then prose-translated it himself.
Builds the case for the resurrection the way a lawyer builds any case — by calling witnesses, naming them, and asking what they had to gain by lying.
Written from a prison cell and then from exile. A case built under that kind of pressure has had every objection its author could imagine already thrown at it.
Meant to be handed to a stranger on a dock, read start to finish in an afternoon, and argued with immediately.
Cited for this book
Grotius wrote The Truth of the Christian Religion first as Dutch verse, for sailors of the East India Company to carry into ports that had never heard the name of Christ, then translated it himself into Latin prose for a European audience. It is the first modern evidential apologetic and still the outline of every one written since: examine the witnesses to the resurrection the way a court would — how many, whether they had anything to gain by lying, whether any of them had every reason to keep quiet and did not.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Five Hundred Witnesses | History | Argument | 88 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 34 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 40 | Nobody Lies For Nothing | Rationality | Argument | 82 | 100% | 15 |
| 44 | The Hostile Witness | History | Argument | 94 | 95% | 5 |
Read it: As a Court Would
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Latin.
“It appears from those books, that they appealed to five hundred witnesses, who saw Jesus… Now, it is not usual for those that speak untruths to appeal to so many witnesses.”
Hugo Grotius, The Truth of the Christian Religion (1627), Bk. II, trans. Clarke (1743), public domain — a short span elided where the source scan is damaged.
“Nobody has any ill design for nothing… the very preaching of the gospel exposed them to hardship, to hunger and thirst.”
Hugo Grotius, The Truth of the Christian Religion (1627), Bk. II, trans. Clarke (1743), public domain — a short span elided where the source scan is damaged.
“Paul, who openly declared that he saw Christ reigning in heaven.”
Hugo Grotius, The Truth of the Christian Religion (1627), Bk. II, trans. Clarke (1743), public domain.
Grotius wrote it first as Dutch verse, for sailors of the East India Company to carry into ports that had never heard the name of Christ, then translated it himself into Latin prose.
It is the first modern evidential apologetic and still the outline of every one written since: examine the witnesses to the resurrection the way a court would — how many, whether they had anything to gain by lying, whether any had every reason to keep quiet and did not.