good
works; while the Arminians complained that the God of the Gomarites was
an unjust God, himself the origin of sin.

The disputes on these themes had been perpetual in the provinces ever
since the early days of the Reformation. Of late, however, the acrimony
of theological conflict had been growing day by day more intense. It was
the eternal struggle of religious dogma to get possession of the State,
and to make use of political forces in order to put fetters on the human
soul; to condemn it to slavery where most it requires freedom.

The conflict between Gomarus and Arminius proceeded with such ferocity in
Leyden, that, since the days of the memorable siege, to which the
university owed its origin, men's minds had never been roused to such
feverish anxiety: The theological cannonades, which thundered daily from
the college buildings and caused all Holland to quake, seemed more
appalling to the burghers than the enginry of Valdez and Boisot had ever
seemed to their fathers.

The Gomarite doctrine gained most favour with the clergy, the Arminian
creed with the municipal magistracies. The magistrates claimed that
decisions concerning religious matters belonged to the supreme authority.
The Gomarites contended that sacred matters should be referred to synods
of the clergy. Here was the germ of a conflict which might one day shake
the republic to its foundations.

Barneveld, the great leader of the municipal, party, who loved political
power quite as well as he loved his country; was naturally a chieftain of
the Arminians; for church, matters were no more separated from political
matters in the commonwealth at that moment than they were in the cabinets
of Henry, James, or Philip.

It was inevitable therefore that the war party should pour upon his head
more than seven vials of theological wrath. The religious doctrines which
he espoused were, odious not only because they were deemed vile in
themselves but because he believed in them.

Arminianism was regarded as a new and horrible epidemic, daily gaining
ground, and threatening to destroy the whole population. Men deliberated
concerning the best means to cut off communication with the infected
regions, and to extirpate the plague even by desperate and heroic
remedies, as men in later days take measures against the cholera or the
rinderpest.

Theological hatred was surely not extinct in the Netherlands. It was a
consolation, however, that its influence was render