Schism in the Church a Public Fact—­Struggle for Power between the Sacerdotal and Political Orders—­Dispute between Arminius and Gomarus—­Rage of James I. at the Appointment of Voratius—­Arminians called Remonstrants—­Hague Conference—­Contra-Remonstrance by Gomarites of Seven Points to the Remonstrants’ Five—­Fierce Theological Disputes throughout the Country—­Ryswyk Secession—­ Maurice wishes to remain neutral, but finds himself the Chieftain of the Contra-Remonstrant Party—­The States of Holland Remonstrant by a large Majority—­The States-General Contra-Remonstrant—­Sir Ralph Winwood leaves the Hague—­Three Armies to take the Field against Protestantism.

Schism in the Church had become a public fact, and theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country.

The great practical question in the Church had been as to the appointment of preachers, wardens, schoolmasters, and other officers.  By the ecclesiastical arrangements of 1591 great power was conceded to the civil authority in church matters, especially in regard to such appointments, which were made by a commission consisting of four members named by the churches and four by the magistrates in each district.

Barneveld, who above all things desired peace in the Church, had wished to revive this ordinance, and in 1612 it had been resolved by the States of Holland that each city or village should, if the magistracy approved, provisionally conform to it.  The States of Utrecht made at the same time a similar arrangement.

It was the controversy which has been going on since the beginning of history and is likely to be prolonged to the end of time—­the struggle for power between the sacerdotal and political orders; the controversy whether priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests.

This was the practical question involved in the fierce dispute as to dogma.  The famous duel between Arminius and Gomarus; the splendid theological tournaments which succeeded; six champions on a side armed in full theological panoply and swinging the sharpest curtal axes which learning, passion, and acute intellect could devise, had as yet produced no beneficent result.  Nobody had been convinced by the shock of argument, by the exchange of those desperate blows.  The High Council of the Hague had declared that no difference of opinion in the Church existed sufficient to prevent fraternal harmony and happiness.  But Gomarus loudly declared that, if there were no means of putting down the heresy of Arminius, there would before long be a struggle such as would set province against province, village against village, family against family, throughout the land.  He should be afraid to die in such doctrine.  He shuddered that any one should dare to come before God’s tribunal with such blasphemies.  Meantime his great adversary, the learned and eloquent, the musical, frolicsome, hospitable heresiarch was no more.  Worn out with controversy, but peaceful and happy in the convictions which were so bitterly denounced by Gomarus and a large proportion of both preachers and laymen in the Netherlands, and convinced that the schism which in his view had been created by those who called themselves the orthodox would weaken the cause of Protestantism throughout Europe, Arminius died at the age of forty-nine.