The power of Barneveld and his partisans was now put to a severe strain.  His efforts to bring back the Hague seceders were powerless.  The influence of Uytenbogaert over the Stadholder steadily diminished.  He prayed to be relieved from his post in the Great Church of the Hague, especially objecting to serve with a Contra-Remonstrant preacher whom Maurice wished to officiate there in place of the seceding Rosaeus.  But the Stadholder refused to let him go, fearing his influence in other places.  “There is stuff in him,” said Maurice, “to outweigh half a dozen Contra-Remonstrant preachers.”  Everywhere in Holland the opponents of the Five Points refused to go to the churches, and set up tabernacles for themselves in barns, outhouses, canal-boats.  And the authorities in town and village nailed up the barn-doors, and dispersed the canal boat congregations, while the populace pelted them with stones.  The seceders appealed to the Stadholder, pleading that at least they ought to be allowed to hear the word of God as they understood it without being forced into churches where they were obliged to hear Arminian blasphemy.  At least their barns might be left them.  “Barns,” said Maurice, “barns and outhouses!  Are we to preach in barns?  The churches belong to us, and we mean to have them too.”

Not long afterwards the Stadholder, clapping his hand on his sword hilt, observed that these differences could only be settled by force of arms.  An ominous remark and a dreary comment on the forty years’ war against the Inquisition.

And the same scenes that were enacting in Holland were going on in Overyssel and Friesland and Groningen; but with a difference.  Here it was the Five Points men who were driven into secession, whose barns were nailed up, and whose preachers were mobbed.  A lugubrious spectacle, but less painful certainly than the hangings and drownings and burnings alive in the previous century to prevent secession from the indivisible church.

It is certain that stadholders and all other magistrates ever since the establishment of independence were sworn to maintain the Reformed religion and to prevent a public divine worship under any other form.  It is equally certain that by the 13th Article of the Act of Union—­the organic law of the confederation made at Utrecht in 1579—­each province reserved for itself full control of religious questions.  It would indeed seem almost unimaginable in a country where not only every province, but every city, every municipal board, was so jealous of its local privileges and traditional rights that the absolute disposition over the highest, gravest, and most difficult questions that can inspire and perplex humanity should be left to a general government, and one moreover which had scarcely come into existence.

Yet into this entirely illogical position the Commonwealth was steadily drifting.  The cause was simple enough.  The States of Holland, as already observed, were Remonstrant by a large majority.  The States-General were Contra-Remonstrant by a still greater majority.  The Church, rigidly attached to the Confession and Catechism, and refusing all change except through decree of a synod to be called by the general government which it controlled, represented the national idea.  It thus identified itself with the Republic, and was in sympathy with a large majority of the population.