overb, 'Chi ti caresse piu
che suole,' &c.,' is added to other likelihoods."

It was subsequently understood however that the pamphlet was written by a
Remonstrant preacher of Utrecht, named Jacobus Taurinus; one of those who
had been doomed to death by the mutinous government in that city seven
years before.

It was now sufficiently obvious that either the governments in the three
opposition provinces must be changed or that the National Synod must be
imposed by a strict majority vote in the teeth of the constitution and of
vigorous and eloquent protests drawn up by the best lawyers in the
country. The Advocate and Grotius recommended a provincial synod first
and, should that not succeed in adjusting the differences of church
government, then the convocation of a general or oecumenical synod. They
resisted the National Synod because, in their view, the Provinces were
not a nation. A league of seven sovereign and independent Mates was all
that legally existed in the Netherlands. It was accordingly determined
that the governments should be changed, and the Stadholder set himself to
prepare the way for a thorough and, if possible, a bloodless revolution.
He departed on the 27th November for a tour through the chief cities, and
before leaving the Hague addressed an earnest circular letter to the
various municipalities of Holland.

A more truly dignified, reasonable, right royal letter, from the
Stadholder's point of view, could not have been indited. The Imperial
"we" breathing like a morning breeze through the whole of it blew away
all legal and historical mistiness.

But the clouds returned again nevertheless. Unfortunately for Maurice it
could not be argued by the pen, however it might be proved by the sword,
that the Netherlands constituted a nation, and that a convocation of
doctors of divinity summoned by a body of envoys had the right to dictate
a creed to seven republics.

All parties were agreed on one point. There must be unity of divine
worship. The territory of the Netherlands was not big enough to hold two
systems of religion, two forms of Christianity, two sects of
Protestantism. It was big enough to hold seven independent and sovereign
states, but would be split into fragments--resolved into chaos--should
there be more than one Church or if once a schism were permitted in that
Church. Grotius was as much convinced of this as Gomarus. And yet the
13th Article of the Union stared them all in the face, for