“You will give good assurances,” said the Advocate, “upon my word, that the conservation of the true Reformed religion is as warmly cherished here, especially by me, as at any time during the war.”

He next alluded to the charges then considered very grave against certain writings of Vorstius, and with equal fairness to his accusers as he had been to the Professor gave a pledge that the subject should be examined.

“If the man in question,” he said, “be the author, as perhaps falsely imputed, of the work ‘De Filiatione Christi’ or things of that sort, you may be sure that he shall have no furtherance here.”  He complained, however, that before proof the cause was much prejudiced by the circulation through the press of letters on the subject from important personages in England.  His own efforts to do justice in the matter were traversed by such machinations.  If the Professor proved to be guilty of publications fairly to be deemed atheistical and blasphemous, he should be debarred from his functions, but the outcry from England was doing more harm than good.

“The published extract from the letter of the Archbishop,” he wrote, “to the effect that the King will declare My Lords the States to be his enemies if they are not willing to send the man away is doing much harm.”

Truly, if it had come to this—­that a King of England was to go to war with a neighbouring and friendly republic because an obnoxious professor of theology was not instantly hurled from a university of which his Majesty was not one of the overseers—­it was time to look a little closely into the functions of governments and the nature of public and international law.  Not that the sword of James was in reality very likely to be unsheathed, but his shriekings and his scribblings, pacific as he was himself, were likely to arouse passions which torrents of blood alone could satiate.

“The publishing and spreading among the community,” continued Barneveld, “of M. Winwood’s protestations and of many indecent libels are also doing much mischief, for the nature of this people does not tolerate such things.  I hope, however, to obtain the removal according to his Majesty’s desire.  Keep me well informed, and send me word what is thought in England by the four divines of the book of Vorstius, ‘De Deo,’ and of his declarations on the points sent here by his Majesty.  Let me know, too, if there has been any later confession published in England than that of the year 1562, and whether the nine points pressed in the year 1595 were accepted and published in 1603.  If so, pray send them, as they maybe made use of in settling our differences here.”

Thus it will be seen that the spirit of conciliation, of a calm but earnest desire to obtain a firm grasp of the most reasonable relations between Church and State through patient study of the phenomena exhibited in other countries, were the leading motives of the man.  Yet he was perpetually denounced in private as an unbeliever, an atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy within the Provinces and from kings outside them.