And now another element of discord had come, more potent than all the rest:  the terrible, never ending, struggle of Church against State.  Theological hatred which forty years long had found vent in the exchange of acrimony between the ancient and the Reformed churches was now assuming other shapes.  Religion in that age and country was more than has often been the case in history the atmosphere of men’s daily lives.  But during the great war for independence, although the hostility between the two religious forces was always intense, it was modified especially towards the close of the struggle by other controlling influences.  The love of independence and the passion for nationality, the devotion to ancient political privileges, was often as fervid and genuine in Catholic bosoms as in those of Protestants, and sincere adherents of the ancient church had fought to the death against Spain in defence of chartered rights.

At that very moment it is probable that half the population of the United Provinces was Catholic.  Yet it would be ridiculous to deny that the aggressive, uncompromising; self-sacrificing, intensely believing, perfectly fearless spirit of Calvinism had been the animating soul, the motive power of the great revolt.  For the Provinces to have encountered Spain and Rome without Calvinism, and relying upon municipal enthusiasm only, would have been to throw away the sword and fight with the scabbard.

But it is equally certain that those hot gospellers who had suffered so much martyrdom and achieved so many miracles were fully aware of their power and despotic in its exercise.  Against the oligarchy of commercial and juridical corporations they stood there the most terrible aristocracy of all:  the aristocracy of God’s elect, predestined from all time and to all eternity to take precedence of and to look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures.  It was inevitable that this aristocracy, which had done so much, which had breathed into a new-born commonwealth the breath of its life, should be intolerant, haughty, dogmatic.

The Church of Rome, which had been dethroned after inflicting such exquisite tortures during its period of power, was not to raise its head.  Although so large a proportion of the inhabitants of the country were secretly or openly attached to that faith, it was a penal offence to participate openly in its rites and ceremonies.  Religious equality, except in the minds of a few individuals, was an unimaginable idea.  There was still one Church which arrogated to itself the sole possession of truth, the Church of Geneva.  Those who admitted the possibility of other forms and creeds were either Atheists or, what was deemed worse than Atheists, Papists, because Papists were assumed to be traitors also, and desirous of selling the country to Spain.  An undevout man in that land and at that epoch was an almost unknown phenomenon.  Religion was as much a recognized necessity of existence as food or drink.  It were as easy to find people about without clothes as without religious convictions.