of Infallibility.  The sovereign of a country, having appropriated the revenues of the ancient church, prescribed his own creed to his subjects.  In the royal conscience were included the million consciences of his subjects.  The inevitable result in a country like the Netherlands, without a personal sovereign, was a struggle between the new church and the civil government for mastery.  And at this period, and always in Barneveld’s opinion, the question of dogma was subordinate to that of church government.  That there should be no authority over the King had been settled in England.

Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and afterwards James, having become popes in their own realm, had no great hostility to, but rather an affection for, ancient dogma and splendid ceremonial.  But in the Seven Provinces, even as in France, Germany, and Switzerland, the reform where it had been effected at all had been more thorough, and there was little left of Popish pomp or aristocratic hierarchy.  Nothing could be severer than the simplicity of the Reformed Church, nothing more imperious than its dogma, nothing more infallible than its creed.  It was the true religion, and there was none other.  But to whom belonged the ecclesiastical edifices, the splendid old minsters in the cities—­raised by the people’s confiding piety and the purchased remission of their sins in a bygone age—­and the humbler but beautiful parish churches in every town and village?  To the State; said Barneveld, speaking for government; to the community represented by the states of the provinces, the magistracies of the cities and municipalities.  To the Church itself, the one true church represented by its elders, and deacons, and preachers, was the reply.

And to whom belonged the right of prescribing laws and ordinances of public worship, of appointing preachers, church servants, schoolmasters, sextons?  To the Holy Ghost inspiring the Class and the Synod, said the Church.

To the civil authority, said the magistrates, by which the churches are maintained, and the salaries of the ecclesiastics paid.  The states of Holland are as sovereign as the kings of England or Denmark, the electors of Saxony or Brandenburg, the magistrates of Zurich or Basel or other Swiss cantons.  “Cujus regio ejus religio.”

In 1590 there was a compromise under the guidance of Barneveld.  It was agreed that an appointing board should be established composed of civil functionaries and church officials in equal numbers.  Thus should the interests of religion and of education be maintained.

The compromise was successful enough during the war.  External pressure kept down theological passion, and there were as yet few symptoms of schism in the dominant church.  But there was to come a time when the struggle between church and government was to break forth with an intensity and to rage to an extent which no man at that moment could imagine.