azing to
contemplate. He had no penny to give to the cause in which his nearest
relatives mere so deeply involved and for which his only possible allies
were pledged; but he was ready to give advice to all parties, and with
ludicrous gravity imagined himself playing the umpire between great
contending hosts, when in reality he was only playing the fool at the
beck of masters before whom he quaked.

"You are not to vilipend my counsel," said he one day to a foreign envoy.
"I am neither a camel nor an ass to take up all this work on my
shoulders. Where would you find another king as willing to do it as I
am?"

The King had little time and no money to give to serve his own family and
allies and the cause of Protestantism, but he could squander vast sums
upon worthless favourites, and consume reams of paper on controverted
points of divinity. The appointment of Vorstius to the chair of theology
in Leyden aroused more indignation in his bosom, and occupied more of his
time, than the conquests of Spinola in the duchies, and the menaces of
Spain against Savoy and Bohemia. He perpetually preached moderation to
the States in the matter of the debateable territory, although moderation
at that moment meant submission to the House of Austria. He chose to
affect confidence in the good faith of those who were playing a comedy by
which no statesman could be deceived, but which had secured the
approbation of the Solomon of the age.

But there was one man who was not deceived. The warnings and the
lamentations of Barneveld sound to us out of that far distant time like
the voice of an inspired prophet. It is possible that a portion of the
wrath to come might have been averted had there been many men in high
places to heed his voice. I do not wish to exaggerate the power and
wisdom of the man, nor to set him forth as one of the greatest heroes of
history. But posterity has done far less than justice to a statesman and
sage who wielded a vast influence at a most critical period in the fate
of Christendom, and uniformly wielded it to promote the cause of
temperate human liberty, both political and religious. Viewed by the
light of two centuries and a half of additional experience, he may appear
to have made mistakes, but none that were necessarily disastrous or even
mischievous. Compared with the prevailing idea of the age in which he
lived, his schemes of polity seem to dilate into large dimensions, his
sentiments of religious freedom,