ns but
between two branches of the Reformed Church. He could never be made to
believe that the Five Points of the Remonstrance had dug an abyss too
deep and wide ever to be bridged between brethren lately of one faith as
of one fatherland. He was unceasing in his prayers and appeals for
"mutual toleration on the subject of predestination." Perhaps the
bitterness, almost amounting to frenzy, with which abstruse points of
casuistry were then debated, and which converted differences of opinion
upon metaphysical divinity into deadly hatred and thirst for blood, is
already obsolete or on the road to become so. If so, then was Barneveld
in advance of his age, and it would have been better for the peace of the
world and the progress of Christianity if more of his contemporaries had
placed themselves on his level.

He was no theologian, but he believed himself to be a Christian, and he
certainly was a thoughtful and a humble one. He had not the arrogance to
pierce behind the veil and assume to read the inscrutable thoughts of the
Omnipotent. It was a cruel fate that his humility upon subjects which he
believed to be beyond the scope of human reason should have been tortured
by his enemies into a crime, and that because he hoped for religious
toleration he should be accused of treason to the Commonwealth.

"Believe and cause others to believe," he said, "that I am and with the
grace of God hope to continue an upright patriot as I have proved myself
to be in these last forty-two years spent in the public service. In the
matter of differential religious points I remain of the opinions which I
have held for more than fifty years, and in which I hope to live and die,
to wit, that a good Christian man ought to believe that he is predestined
to eternal salvation through God's grace, giving for reasons that he
through God's grace has a firm belief that his salvation is founded
purely on God's grace and the expiation of our sins through our Saviour
Jesus Christ, and that if he should fall into any sins his firm trust is
that God will not let him perish in them, but mercifully turn him to
repentance, so that he may continue in the same belief to the last."

These expressions were contained in a letter to Caron with the intention
doubtless that they should be communicated to the King of Great Britain,
and it is a curious illustration of the spirit of the age, this picture
of the leading statesman of a great republic unfolding his religio