Antonius Walaeus

Antonius Walaeus (Antoine de Waele, Anton van Wale) (October 1573, Ghent – 3 July 1639, Leiden) was a Dutch Calvinist minister, theologian, and academic.

In 1615 Walaeus published Het Ampt der Kerckendienaren, against the leading Remonstrant and ally of Grotius, Johannes Wtenbogaert, taking up the relationship of church and state.

[4] Gerard Vossius wrote a private letter to Grotius about Het Ampt, unsympathetic to Walaeus, which was published much later as Dissertation epistolica de iure magistratus in rebus ecclesiasticis.(1669).

[3] In the final days of Oldenbarneveldt, Walaeus acted as intermediary with Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange who had brought the religious conflict to a head as a political matter.

[10] It has been stated that Walaeus was concerned to minimise the differences between the Dutch Reformed Church and the views of John Robinson, minister to an English congregation in the Netherlands.

[13] Walaeus, with Johannes Polyander and Anthony Thysius of the Leiden faculty, gave advice as an eirenic moderate on other matters concerning the English congregations, in 1633–4.

[23] In his Enchiridion religionis reformae, an introductory seminary text, Walaeus gives a simplified form of the arguments of Zacharias Ursinus on natural theology; and relies little on Scripture for the existence of God.

[26] Synopsis purioris theologiae disputationibus quinquaginta duabus comprehensa (1625) with his colleagues Johannes Polyander, André Rivet and Anthony Thysius attempted to settle the Leiden view on controversial issues as a united front.