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according to the Union of Utrecht--the fundamental law of the General
Assembly--to regulate religious affairs, but that this right belonged to
the separate provinces, each within its own domain.

They further resolved that as they were bound by solemn oath to maintain
the laws and liberties of Holland, they could not surrender this right to
the Generality, nor allow it to be usurped by any one, but in order to
settle the question of the Five Points, the only cause known to them of
the present disturbances, they were content under: their own authority to
convoke a provincial synod within three months, at their own cost, and to
invite the respective provinces, as many of them as thought good, to send
to this meeting a certain number of pious and learned theologians.

It is difficult to see why the course thus unanimously proposed by the
nobles of Holland, under guidance of Barneveld, and subsequently by a
majority of the States of that province, would not have been as expedient
as it was legal. But we are less concerned with that point now than with
the illustrations afforded by these long buried documents of the
patriotism and sagacity of a man than whom no human creature was ever
more foully slandered.

It will be constantly borne in mind that he regarded this religious
controversy purely from a political, legal, and constitutional--and not
from a theological-point of view. He believed that grave danger to the
Fatherland was lurking under this attempt, by the general government, to
usurp the power of dictating the religious creed of all the provinces.
Especially he deplored the evil influence exerted by the King of England
since his abandonment of the principles announced in his famous letter to
the States in the year 1613. All that the Advocate struggled for was
moderation and mutual toleration within the Reformed Church. He felt that
a wider scheme of forbearance was impracticable. If a dream of general
religious equality had ever floated before him or before any one in that
age, he would have felt it to be a dream which would be a reality nowhere
until centuries should have passed away. Yet that moderation, patience,
tolerance, and respect for written law paved the road to that wider and
loftier region can scarcely be doubted.

Carleton, subservient to every changing theological whim of his master,
was as vehement and as insolent now in enforcing the intolerant views of
James as he had previously been in suppor