a keen politician; a less capable politician, however,
than a soldier, for he was confessedly the first captain of his age. He
was not rapid in his conceptions, but he was sure in the end to
comprehend his opportunity.

The Church, the people, the Union--the sacerdotal, the democratic, and
the national element--united under a name so potent to conjure with as
the name of Orange-Nassau, was stronger than any other possible
combination. Instinctively and logically therefore the Stadholder found
himself the chieftain of the Contra-Remonstrant party, and without the
necessity of an apostasy such as had been required of his great
contemporary to make himself master of France.

The power of Barneveld and his partisans was now put to a severe strain.
His efforts to bring back the Hague seceders were powerless. The
influence of Uytenbogaert over the Stadholder steadily diminished. He
prayed to be relieved from his post in the Great Church of the Hague,
especially objecting to serve with a Contra-Remonstrant preacher whom
Maurice wished to officiate there in place of the seceding Rosaeus. But
the Stadholder refused to let him go, fearing his influence in other
places. "There is stuff in him," said Maurice, "to outweigh half a dozen
Contra-Remonstrant preachers." Everywhere in Holland the opponents of the
Five Points refused to go to the churches, and set up tabernacles for
themselves in barns, outhouses, canal-boats. And the authorities in town
and village nailed up the barn-doors, and dispersed the canal boat
congregations, while the populace pelted them with stones. The seceders
appealed to the Stadholder, pleading that at least they ought to be
allowed to hear the word of God as they understood it without being
forced into churches where they were obliged to hear Arminian blasphemy.
At least their barns might be left them. "Barns," said Maurice, "barns
and outhouses! Are we to preach in barns? The churches belong to us, and
we mean to have them too."

Not long afterwards the Stadholder, clapping his hand on his sword hilt,
observed that these differences could only be settled by force of arms.
An ominous remark and a dreary comment on the forty years' war against
the Inquisition.

And the same scenes that were enacting in Holland were going on in
Overyssel and Friesland and Groningen; but with a difference. Here it was
the Five Points men who were driven into secession, whose barns were
nailed up, and whose preachers wer