A few weeks later Barneveld sent copies to Caron of the latest harangues of Winwood in the Assembly and the reply of My Lords on the Vorstian business; that is to say, the freshest dialogue on predestination between the King and the Advocate.  For as James always dictated word for word the orations of his envoy, so had their Mightinesses at this period no head and no mouthpiece save Barneveld alone.  Nothing could be drearier than these controversies, and the reader shall be spared as much, as possible the infliction of reading them.  It will be necessary, however, for the proper understanding of subsequent events that he should be familiar with portions of the Advocate’s confidential letters.

“Sound well the gentleman you wot of,” said Barneveld, “and other personages as to the conclusive opinions over there.  The course of the propositions does not harmonize with what I have myself heard out of the King’s mouth at other times, nor with the reports of former ambassadors.  I cannot well understand that the King should, with such preciseness, condemn all other opinions save those of Calvin and Beza.  It is important to the service of this country that one should know the final intention of his Majesty.”

And this was the misery of the position.  For it was soon to appear that the King’s definite and final intentions, varied from day to day.  It was almost humorous to find him at that moment condemning all opinions but those of Calvin and Beza in Holland, while his course to the strictest confessors of that creed in England was so ferocious.

But Vorstius was a rival author to his Majesty on subjects treated of by both, so that literary spite of the most venomous kind, stirred into theological hatred, was making a dangerous mixture.  Had a man with the soul and sense of the Advocate sat on the throne which James was regarding at that moment as a professor’s chair, the world’s history would have been changed.

“I fear,” continued Barneveld, “that some of our own precisians have been spinning this coil for us over there, and if the civil authority can be thus countermined, things will go as in Flanders in your time.  Pray continue to be observant, discreet, and moderate.”

The Advocate continued to use his best efforts to smooth the rising waves.  He humoured and even flattered the King, although perpetually denounced by Winwood in his letters to his sovereign as tyrannical, over-bearing, malignant, and treacherous.  He did his best to counsel moderation and mutual toleration, for he felt that these needless theological disputes about an abstract and insoluble problem of casuistry were digging an abyss in which the Republic might be swallowed up for ever.  If ever man worked steadily with the best lights of experience and inborn sagacity for the good of his country and in defence of a constitutional government, horribly defective certainly, but the only legal one, and on the whole a more liberal polity than