nature and education.  War was his element.  By his genius, he improved it as a science:  by his valor, he was one of those who raised it from the degradation of a trade to the dignity of a passion.  But when removed from the camp to the council room, he became all at once a common man.  His frankness degenerated into roughness; his decision into despotism; his courage into cruelty.  He gave a new proof of the melancholy fact that circumstances may transform the most apparent qualities of virtue into those opposite vices between which human wisdom is baffled when it attempts to draw a decided and invariable line.

Opposed to Maurice in almost every one of his acts, was, as we have already seen, Barneveldt, one of the truest patriots of any time or country; and, with the exception of William the Great, prince of Orange, the most eminent citizen to whom the affairs of the Netherlands have given celebrity.  A hundred pens have labored to do honor to this truly virtuous man.  His greatness has found a record in every act of his life; and his death, like that of William, though differently accomplished, was equally a martyrdom for the liberties of his country.  We cannot enter minutely into the train of circumstances which for several years brought Maurice and Barneveldt into perpetual concussion with each other.  Long after the completion of the truce, which the latter so mainly aided in accomplishing, every minor point in the domestic affairs of the republic seemed merged in the conflict between the stadtholder and the pensionary.  Without attempting to specify these, we may say, generally, that almost every one redounded to the disgrace of the prince and the honor of the patriot.  But the main question of agitation was the fierce dispute which soon broke out between two professors of theology of the university of Leyden, Francis Gomar and James Arminius.  We do not regret on this occasion that our confined limits spare us the task of recording in detail controversies on points of speculative doctrine far beyond the reach of the human understanding, and therefore presumptuous, and the decision of which cannot be regarded as of vital importance by those who justly estimate the grand principles of Christianity.  The whole strength of the intellects which had long been engaged in the conflict for national and religious liberty, was now directed to metaphysical theology, and wasted upon interminable disputes about predestination and grace.  Barneveldt enrolled himself among the partisans of Arminius; Maurice became a Gomarist.

It was, however, scarcely to be wondered at that a country so recently delivered from slavery both in church and state should run into wild excesses of intolerance, before sectarian principles were thoroughly understood and definitively fixed.  Persecutions of various kinds were indulged in against Papists, Anabaptists, Socinians, and all the shades of doctrine into which Christianity had split.  Every minister