According to the senate's statement, Cartesian philosophy was to be suppressed because: Descartes countered with a personal attack on Voetius, in a letter to Jacques Dinet, which he made public in the second edition (1642) of his Meditations.

Voetius was provoked into getting Martin Schoock to produce a book-length assault on Descartes and his work, the Admiranda methodus (1643).

Descartes associated the quarrel with the part Voetius was playing with another controversy with Samuel Maresius, who was at least sympathetic to some Cartesian ideas.

Legal and diplomatic moves followed (the protagonists were in different provinces in the Netherlands); and Maresius at the University of Groningen was able to extract some admissions from Schoock that were quite damaging to Voetius.

[4] In his long letter to Voetius (Epistola ad Voetium), Descartes mentioned Aristotelianism only twice; by contrast, the topics of theology, faith, and atheism were put on the table hundreds of times.