PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete

by John Lothrop Motley

Being perpetually goaded by one judge after another as to his disrespectful conduct towards the King of Great Britain, and asked why his Majesty had not as good right to give the advice of 1617 as the recommendation of tolerance in 1613, he scrupulously abstained, as he had done in all his letters, from saying a disrespectful word as to the glaring inconsistency between the two communications, or to the hostility manifested towards himself personally by the British ambassador. He had always expressed the hope, he said, that the King would adhere to his original position, but did not dispute his right to change his mind, nor the good faith which had inspired his later letters. It had been his object, if possible, to reconcile the two different systems recommended by his Majesty into one harmonious whole.

His whole aim had been to preserve the public peace as it was the duty of every magistrate, especially in times of such excitement, to do. He could never comprehend why the toleration of the Five Points should be a danger to the Reformed religion. Rather, he thought, it would strengthen the Church and attract many Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, and other good patriots into its pale. He had always opposed the compulsory acceptance by the people of the special opinions of scribes and doctors. He did not consider, he said, the difference in doctrine on this disputed point between the Contra-Remonstrants and Remonstrants as one-tenth the value of the civil authority and its right to make laws and ordinances regulating ecclesiastical affairs.

He believed the great bulwark of the independence of the country to be the Reformed Church, and his efforts had ever been to strengthen that bulwark by preventing the unnecessary schism which might prove its ruin. Many questions of property, too, were involved in the question—the church buildings, lands and pastures belonging to the Counts of Holland and their successors—the States having always exercised the right of church patronage—'jus patronatus'—a privilege which, as well as inherited or purchased advowsons, had been of late flagrantly interfered with.

He was asked if he had not said that it had never been the intention of the States-General to carry on the war for this or that religion.

He replied that he had told certain clergymen expressing to him their opinion that the war had been waged solely for the furtherance of their especial shade of belief, that in his view the war had been undertaken for the conservation of the liberties and laws of the land, and of its good people. Of that freedom the first and foremost point was the true Christian religion and liberty of conscience and opinion. There must be religion in the Republic, he had said, but that the war was carried on to sustain the opinion of one doctor of divinity or another on—differential points was something he had never heard of and could never believe. The good citizens of the country had as much right to hold by Melancthon as by Calvin or Beza. He knew that the first proclamations in regard to the war declared it to be undertaken for freedom of conscience, and so to his, own knowledge it had been always carried on.

He was asked if he had not promised during the Truce negotiations so to direct matters that the Catholics with time might obtain public exercise of their religion.

He replied that this was a notorious falsehood and calumny, adding that it ill accorded with the proclamation against the Jesuits drawn up by himself some years after the Truce. He furthermore stated that it was chiefly by his direction that the discourse of President Jeannin—urging on part of the French king that liberty of worship might be granted to the Papists—was kept secret, copies of it not having been furnished even to the commissioners of the Provinces.

His indignant denial of this charge, especially taken in connection with his repeated assertions during the trial, that among the most patriotic Netherlanders during and since the war were many adherents of the ancient church, seems marvellously in contradiction with his frequent and most earnest pleas for liberty of conscience. But it did not appear contradictory even to his judges nor to any contemporary. His position had always been that the civil authority of each province was supreme in all matters political or ecclesiastical. The States-General, all the provinces uniting in the vote, had invited the Catholic provinces 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 despatches to the Archduke at Brussels, was nursing sanguine hopes and weaving elaborate schemes for recovering his dominion over the United Netherlands, and proposing to send an army of Jesuits thither to break the way to the reconquest. To play into his hands then, by granting public right of worship to the Papists, would have been in Barneveld's opinion like giving up Julich and other citadels in the debatable land to Spain just as the great war between Catholicism and Protestantism was breaking out. There had been enough of burning and burying alive in the Netherlands during the century which had closed. It was not desirable to give a chance for their renewal now.

In regard to the Synod, Barneveld justified his course by a simple reference to the 13th Article of the Union. Words could not more plainly prohibit the interference by the States-General with the religious affairs of any one of the Provinces than had been done by that celebrated clause. In 1583 there had been an attempt made to amend that article by insertion of a pledge to maintain the Evangelical, Reformed, religion solely, but it was never carried out. He disdained to argue so self-evident a truth, that a confederacy which had admitted and constantly invited Catholic states to membership, under solemn pledge of noninterference with their religious affairs, had no right to lay down formulas for the Reformed Church throughout all the Netherlands. The oath of stadholder and magistrates in Holland to maintain the Reformed religion was framed before this unhappy controversy on predestination had begun, and it was mere arrogant assumption on the part of the Contra-Remonstrants to claim a monopoly of that religion, and to exclude the Remonstrants from its folds.