Life

He became professor at the Academy of Saumur

Academy of Saumur

The Academy of Saumur was a Huguenot university at Saumur in western France. It existed from 1593, when it was founded by Philippe de Mornay, until shortly after 1683, when Louis XIV decided on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, ending the limited toleration of Protestantism in...

 in 1617.
He was in London in the year 1644. where he engaged in propaganda for the Presbyterians against the Independents. The first attack on the Apologeticall Narration of the Five Dissenting Brethren was Steuart's. The Second Part of the Duply to M. S. alias Two Brethren addressed the issue of religious tolerance, which he classed with depravity. It was answered by John Goodwin

John Goodwin

John Goodwin may refer to:*John Goodwin , English preacher and religious writer*John B. Goodwin, Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia in the late 1880s...

. Steuart is mentioned (as A. S.) in John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

's poem On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament, a caudate sonnet

Caudate sonnet

A caudate sonnet is an expanded version of the sonnet. It consists of 14 lines in standard sonnet forms followed by a coda .The invention of the form is credited to Francesco Berni...

, along with Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish Presbyterian theologian and author, and one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly.-Life:...

 and Thomas Edwards

Thomas Edwards (Heresiographer)

Thomas Edwards was an English Puritan clergyman. He was a very influential preacher in London of the 1640s, and also one of the most ferocious polemical writers of the time, arguing from a conservative Presbyterian point of view against the Independents.-Life:He graduated M.A. from Queens'...

 (and, implicitly, Robert Baillie

Robert Baillie

Robert Baillie was a Scottish divine and historical writer.-Life:Baillie was born at Glasgow, the son of Baillie of Jerviston...

).

In 1644 he took up a position as Professor of Physics at the University of Leiden . With Jacobus Triglandius and Jacobus Revius

Jacobus Revius

Jacobus Revius was a Dutch poet, Calvinist theologian and church historian. His most renowned collection of poems, the Over-ysselsche Sangen en Dichten , forms a high point of Dutch baroque...

 he attacked Cartesianism

Cartesianism

Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes—from his name—Rene Des-Cartes. It may refer to:*Cartesian anxiety*Cartesian circle*Cartesian dualism...

 there. In what is now known as the Leiden Crisis, coming to a head in 1647, he opposed Adriaan Heereboord, over whom he had been brought in, and presided at a rowdy debate with the Leiden Cartesian Johannes de Raey

Johannes de Raey

Johannes de Raey was a Dutch philosopher and an early cartesian.-Life facts and education:...

. René Descartes

René Descartes

René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

 himself commented on Steuart, in Notae in Programma Quoddam (1648), to which Steuart replied in Notae in notas nobilissimi cujusdam viri in ipsius theses de Deo (1648). Steuart's party, the proponents of continuing to teach along the lines of Aristotelian

Aristotelianism

Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings...

 philosophy, won a temporary victory.

He was attacked by the theologian Samuel Maresius

Samuel Maresius

Samuel Maresius was a French-Dutch Reformed theologian ad controversialist.-Life:He was born at Oisement in Picardy, northern France. He studied in Paris, in Saumur Academy under Gomarus, and in Geneva at the time of the Synod of Dort. He was ordained in 1620, and preachedat Laon until a...

, during further controversy, as heterodox. He died in Leiden. .