h a prepared
oration, wearisome as a fast-day sermon after the third turn of the
hour-glass, pragmatical as a schoolmaster's harangue to fractious little
boys.

He divided his lecture into two heads--the peace of the Church, and the
peace of the Provinces--starting with the first. "A Jove principium," he
said, "I will begin with that which is both beginning and end. It is the
truth of God's word and its maintenance that is the bond of our common
cause. Reasons of state invite us as friends and neighbours by the
preservation of our lives and property, but the interest of religion
binds us as Christians and brethren to the mutual defence of the liberty
of our consciences."

He then proceeded to point out the only means by which liberty of
conscience could be preserved. It was by suppressing all forms of
religion but one, and by silencing all religious discussion. Peter
Titelman and Philip II. could not have devised a more pithy formula. All
that was wanting was the axe and faggot to reduce uniformity to practice.
Then liberty of conscience would be complete.

"One must distinguish," said the Ambassador, "between just liberty and
unbridled license, and conclude that there is but one truth single and
unique. Those who go about turning their brains into limbecks for
distilling new notions in religious matters only distract the union of
the Church which makes profession of this unique truth. If it be
permitted to one man to publish the writings and fantasies of a sick
spirit and for another moved by Christian zeal to reduce this wanderer
'ad sanam mentem;' why then 'patet locus adversus utrumque,' and the
common enemy (the Devil) slips into the fortress." He then proceeded to
illustrate this theory on liberty of conscience by allusions to Conrad
Vorstius.

This infamous sectary had in fact reached such a pitch of audacity, said
the Ambassador, as not only to inveigh against the eternal power of God
but to indulge in irony against the honour of his Majesty King James.

And in what way had he scandalized the government of the Republic? He had
dared to say that within its borders there was religious toleration. He
had distinctly averred that in the United Provinces heretics were not
punished with death or with corporal chastisement.

"He declares openly," said Carleton, "that contra haereticos etiam vere
dictos (ne dum falso et calumniose sic traductos) there is neither
sentence of death nor other corporal punishment, so