The Netherlanders had wrung their original fatherland out of the grasp of the ocean. They had confronted for centuries the wrath of that ancient tyrant, ever ready to seize the prey of which he had been defrauded.
They had waged fiercer and more perpetual battle with a tyranny more cruel than the tempest, with an ancient superstition more hungry than the sea. It was inevitable that a race, thus invigorated by the ocean, cradled to freedom by their conflicts with its power, and hardened almost to invincibility by their struggle against human despotism, should be foremost among the nations in the development of political, religious, and commercial freedom.
The writer now takes an affectionate farewell of those who have followed him with an indulgent sympathy as he has attempted to trace the origin and the eventful course of the Dutch commonwealth. If by his labours a generous love has been fostered for that blessing, without which everything that this earth can afford is worthless—freedom of thought, of speech, and of life—his highest wish has been fulfilled.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
About equal to that of England at the same period
An unjust God, himself the origin of sin
Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended
Calling a peace perpetual can never make it so
Chieftains are dwarfed in the estimation of followers
Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting
Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims
Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition
God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice
Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists
Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion
He often spoke of popular rights with contempt
John Wier, a physician of Grave
Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch
Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers
Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration)
Privileged to beg, because ashamed to work
Religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants
So unconscious of her strength
State can best defend religion by letting it alone
Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent
The People had not been invented
The slightest theft was punished with the gallows
Tolerate another religion that his own may be tolerated
Toleration—that intolerable term of insult
War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest