“You are not to vilipend my counsel,” said he one day to a foreign envoy.  “I am neither a camel nor an ass to take up all this work on my shoulders.  Where would you find another king as willing to do it as I am?”

The King had little time and no money to give to serve his own family and allies and the cause of Protestantism, but he could squander vast sums upon worthless favourites, and consume reams of paper on controverted points of divinity.  The appointment of Vorstius to the chair of theology in Leyden aroused more indignation in his bosom, and occupied more of his time, than the conquests of Spinola in the duchies, and the menaces of Spain against Savoy and Bohemia.  He perpetually preached moderation to the States in the matter of the debateable territory, although moderation at that moment meant submission to the House of Austria.  He chose to affect confidence in the good faith of those who were playing a comedy by which no statesman could be deceived, but which had secured the approbation of the Solomon of the age.

But there was one man who was not deceived.  The warnings and the lamentations of Barneveld sound to us out of that far distant time like the voice of an inspired prophet.  It is possible that a portion of the wrath to come might have been averted had there been many men in high places to heed his voice.  I do not wish to exaggerate the power and wisdom of the man, nor to set him forth as one of the greatest heroes of history.  But posterity has done far less than justice to a statesman and sage who wielded a vast influence at a most critical period in the fate of Christendom, and uniformly wielded it to promote the cause of temperate human liberty, both political and religious.  Viewed by the light of two centuries and a half of additional experience, he may appear to have made mistakes, but none that were necessarily disastrous or even mischievous.  Compared with the prevailing idea of the age in which he lived, his schemes of polity seem to dilate into large dimensions, his sentiments of religious freedom, however limited to our modern ideas, mark an epoch in human progress, and in regard to the general commonwealth of Christendom, of which he was so leading a citizen, the part he played was a lofty one.  No man certainly understood the tendency of his age more exactly, took a broader and more comprehensive view than he did of the policy necessary to preserve the largest portion of the results of the past three-quarters of a century, or had pondered the relative value of great conflicting forces more skilfully.  Had his counsels been always followed, had illustrious birth placed him virtually upon a throne, as was the case with William the Silent, and thus allowed him occasionally to carry out the designs of a great mind with almost despotic authority, it might have been better for the world.  But in that age it was royal blood alone that could command unflinching obedience without exciting personal rivalry.