“Calvin had inspired in his disciples that energy of piety which abhors all halfway measures, which boldly endeavors to make all the affairs of life subject to Christ, the Head and Lord. . . . But what was needed, viz., firm principles about the relation of the Reformation to the forces of modern emerging culture—to the state, science, and art—this was lacking, and how could it be attained all at once in the midst of all the unrest of the time? Regarded in this way, we believe the appearance of natural law doctrine becomes comprehensible. A doctrine of the state constructed on evangelical principles was not in existence. But such a doctrine was imperatively needed and demanded by the need of the time. Men needed to have clearness about the relation of the ruler to the subjects, about the problem of Church and State, about the relation between different churches in the same country. No wonder that in the lack of a conception of the state revised in the light of fundamental evangelical ideas, men had recourse to the political theory taught in the traditional jurisprudence, without heeding the fact that that theory had an origin foreign to the Reformation, and involved tendencies and consequences which would lead away from the Reformation. These tendencies, of course, became apparent later in slowly developing after-effects, and then, especially after the spiritual enervation sustained in the protracted religious wars, they could not fail gradually to dissipate and destroy the Reformation’s basis of faith. . . .”
EL Hebden Taylor, The Christian Philosophy Of Law, Politics And The State, p.3
(quoting August Lang in the Princeton Theological Review entitled “The Reformation and Natural Law”)
The Enlightenment historian Peter Gay agreed that the “native law” tradition was originally mostly Stoical in its nature – it had already been present in scholastic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas in a mild form, but by the time of late Renaissance it had begun to be available in an “uncut” form, more faithful to the pagan original, even though still paying respectful lip service to Christianity at that time (the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, at the beginning of the 18th century, was probably the first notable neo-Stoic philosopher who allowed his un- and anti-Christian sentiments to be almost openly seen).
https://archive.org/details/enlightenmentint0000unse_i6k5/page/298/mode/2up?view=theater
“Many tributaries, then, contributed to this pacific current, but as Wilhelm Dilthey showed half a century ago in a series of brilliant essays, its chief ingredient was Stoicism. Neo-Stoicism fertilized debate all through Western Europe, most fruitfully in the centers of internecine religious conflict. In the rebellious Netherlands, the center of learning and religious controversy, educated men turned to Stoicism as a cure for the disease of civil war. Dirck Coornhert, who witnessed the start of the Dutch rebellion against Spain, was the first in a distinguished line of Dutch Stoics to embody its ideal of public service and intellectual brotherhood: he was a statesman and theologian, Humanist and Christian. He knew the Romans well: he translated Seneca and Cicero’s De Officiis and drew from them the irenic message that all men are brothers. The warring sects, he wrote, are not so deeply divided as narrow passions have led them to believe; the true Word of God is the healing Word of Christ and that alone.
Coornhert’s most important pupil was Jacobus Arminius, who came to preach against his heresies and stayed to preach for them. In Arminius’s sermons, Calvinism is softened to gentle instruction designed to lead sinful men toward a reform of their lives. Through Dutch Arminianism, a growing and articulate minority in the seventeenth-century Netherlands despite its defeats at the hands of rigid Calvinists, Neo-Stoicism obtained a wide hearing. The Arminians argued that the truths by which men must live are Christian truths; they are found in the loving teachings of the New Testament, and they remain true outside and without revelation. It was with this group that Hugo Grotius, the founder of modern international law and an admirer of Galileo, associated himself, to his cost and his glory. Steeped in Seneca and Cicero, and explicitly their disciple, Grotius applied their philosophical method to impose order on a disordered world: there are certain ideas common to all rational men, and these ideas are discovered by reason; they do not depend on theology. “Natural law,” he wrote in a famous passage, “is so unalterable that God himself cannot change it.” Assuming that God did not exist, he wrote in another, equally famous passage, the rules of natural law would retain their validity. With these pronouncements, natural law, which had occupied a subordinate place in the Christian scheme of things, made its declaration of independence.”
So one can see that even though the Calvinists have been accused to preaching “Stoic fatalism,” it has actually been the Arminians who have been more indebted to Stoic thought, or the neo-Stoic humanistic tradition.
Hugo Grotius was an important connecting person, for being such a versatile genius, he had his feet in theological, juristic (and the Roman Civil Law had been soaked in Stoic presuppositions already in ancient times) and philosophical worlds at the same time. This judgment is from a massive recent biography of Grotius:
https://books.google.fi/books?id=OymeBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PR1&hl=fi&pg=PA135#v=onepage&q&f=false
“But Grotius’ professions of impartiality were a smokescreen. This is clear enough from the ferocity with which he attacked the quarrelsomeness and intolerance of the professional theologians on the Contra-Remonstrant side.33 In reality he and Wtenbogaert were in the vanguard of the Arminian pressure group, each of them deploying his own particular talents and strong points.”
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who in spite of having been a wild bohemian, tried to be a serious Christian in his old age, saw Grotius as the source of liberal theology within the Anglican church – and neo-Stoic natural-law moralism naturally came along with Arminianism as well:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44795/44795-h/44795-h.htm#Page_106
“No impartial person, competently acquainted with the history of the Reformation, and the works of the earlier Protestant Divines, at home and abroad, even to the close of Elizabeth’s reign, will deny that the doctrines of Calvin on Redemption and the natural state of fallen man, are in all essential points the same as those of Luther, Zuinglius, and the first Reformers collectively. These Doctrines have, however, since the re-establishment of the Episcopal Church at the return of Charles II., been as generally[72] exchanged for what is commonly entitled Arminianism, but which, taken as a complete and explicit Scheme of Belief, it would be both historically and theologically more accurate to call Grotianism, or Christianity according to Grotius.”
https://x.com/The_Kings_Hall/status/1876977157945098699