The country was taken by surprise; no resistance was offered.  The concluding scenes of the tragedy were hurried on; violence was succeeded by violence, against public feeling and public justice.  Maurice became completely absolute in everything but in name.  The supplications of ambassadors, the protests of individuals, the arguments of statesmen, were alike unavailing to stop the torrent of despotism and injustice.  The synod of Dort was opened on the 13th of November, 1618.  Theology was mystified; religion disgraced; Christianity outraged.  And after one hundred and fifty-two sittings, during six months’ display of ferocity and fraud, the solemn mockery was closed on the 9th of May, 1619, by the declaration of its president, that “its miraculous labors had made hell tremble.”

Proscriptions, banishments, and death were the natural consequences of this synod.  The divisions which it had professed to extinguish were rendered a thousand times more violent than before.  Its decrees did incalculable ill to the cause they were meant to promote.  The Anglican Church was the first to reject the canons of Dort with horror and contempt.  The Protestants of France and Germany, and even Geneva, the nurse and guardian of Calvinism, were shocked and disgusted, and unanimously softened down the rigor of their respective creeds.  But the moral effects of this memorable conclave were too remote to prevent the sacrifice which almost immediately followed the celebration of its rites.  A trial by twenty-four prejudiced enemies, by courtesy called judges, which in its progress and its result throws judicial dignity into scorn, ended in the condemnation of Barneveldt and his fellow patriots, for treason against the liberties they had vainly labored to save.  Barneveldt died on the scaffold by the hands of the executioner on the 13th of May, 1619, in the seventy-second year of his age.  Grotius and Hoogerbeets were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.  Ledenberg committed suicide in his cell, sooner than brave the tortures which he anticipated at the hands of his enemies.

Many more pages than we are able to afford sentences might be devoted to the details of these iniquitous proceedings, and an account of their awful consummation.  The pious heroism of Barneveldt was never excelled by any martyr to the most holy cause.  He appealed to Maurice against the unjust sentence which condemned him to death; but he scorned to beg his life.  He met his fate with such temperate courage as was to be expected from the dignified energy of his life.  His last words were worthy a philosopher whose thoughts, even in his latest moments, were superior to mere personal hope or fear, and turned to the deep mysteries of his being.  “O God!” cried De Barneveldt, “what then is man?” as he bent his head to the sword that severed it from his body, and sent the inquiring spirit to learn the great mystery for which it longed.

CHAPTER XVII