d to invite his Excellency to take part in the
deliberations. A committee which had waited upon him the day before had
reported him as in favour of moderate rather than harsh measures in the
church affair, while maintaining his plighted word to the seceders.

Barneveld stoutly opposed the motion.

"What need had the sovereign states of Holland of advice from a
stadholder, from their servant, their functionary?" he cried.

But the majority for once thought otherwise. The Prince was invited to
come. The deliberations were moderate but inconclusive. He appeared again
at an adjourned meeting when the councils were not so harmonious.

Barneveld, Grotius, and other eloquent speakers endeavoured to point out
that the refusal of the seceders to hold communion with the Remonstrant
preachers and to insist on a separation was fast driving the state to
perdition. They warmly recommended mutual toleration and harmony. Grotius
exhausted learning and rhetoric to prove that the Five Points were not
inconsistent with salvation nor with the constitution of the United
Provinces.

The Stadholder grew impatient at last and clapped his hand on his rapier.

"No need here," he said, "of flowery orations and learned arguments. With
this good sword I will defend the religion which my father planted in
these Provinces, and I should like to see the man who is going to prevent
me!"

The words had an heroic ring in the ears of such as are ever ready to
applaud brute force, especially when wielded by a prince. The argumentum
ad ensem, however, was the last plea that William the Silent would have
been likely to employ on such an occasion, nor would it have been easy to
prove that the Reformed religion had been "planted" by one who had drawn
the sword against the foreign tyrant, and had made vast sacrifices for
his country's independence years before abjuring communion with the Roman
Catholic Church.

When swords are handled by the executive in presence of civil assemblies
there is usually but one issue to be expected.

Moreover, three whales had recently been stranded at Scheveningen, one of
them more than sixty feet long, and men wagged their beards gravely as
they spoke of the event, deeming it a certain presage of civil
commotions. It was remembered that at the outbreak of the great war two
whales had been washed ashore in the Scheldt. Although some free-thinking
people were inclined to ascribe the phenomenon to a prevalence of strong
wes