vinces on more
than one occasion to join the Union, promising that there should be no
interference on the part of any states or individuals with the internal
affairs religious or otherwise of the provinces accepting the invitation.
But it would have been a gross contradiction of his own principle if he
had promised so to direct matters that the Catholics should have public
right of worship in Holland where he knew that the civil authority was
sure to refuse it, or in any of the other six provinces in whose internal
affairs he had no voice whatever. He was opposed to all tyranny over
conscience, he would have done his utmost to prevent inquisition into
opinion, violation of domicile, interference with private worship,
compulsory attendance in Protestant churches of those professing the
Roman creed. This was not attempted. No Catholic was persecuted on
account of his religion. Compared with the practice in other countries
this was a great step in advance. Religious tolerance lay on the road to
religious equality, a condition which had hardly been imagined then and
scarcely exists in Europe even to this day. But among the men in history
whose life and death contributed to the advancement of that blessing, it
would be vain to deny that Barneveld occupies a foremost place.

Moreover, it should be remembered that religious equality then would have
been a most hazardous experiment. So long as Church and State were
blended, it was absolutely essential at that epoch for the preservation
of Protestantism to assign the predominance to the State. Should the
Catholics have obtained religious equality, the probable result would
before long have been religious inequality, supremacy of the Catholics in
the Church, and supremacy of the Church over the State. The fruits of the
forty years' war would have become dust and ashes. It would be mere weak
sentimentalism to doubt--after the bloody history which had just closed
and the awful tragedy, then reopening--that every spark of religious
liberty would have soon been trodden out in the Netherlands. The general
onslaught of the League with Ferdinand, Maximilian of Bavaria, and Philip
of Spain at its head against the distracted, irresolute, and wavering
line of Protestantism across the whole of Europe was just preparing.
Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic, was the war-cry
of the Emperor. The King of Spain, as we have just been reading in his
most secret, ciphered despatch