The calmness with which the Advocate spoke of these exciting and painful events is remarkable.  It was exactly a week before the date of his letter that this riot had taken place at Amsterdam; very significant in its nature and nearly tragical in its results.  There were no Remonstrant preachers left in the city, and the people of that persuasion were excluded from the Communion service.  On Sunday morning, 17th February (1617), a furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop, a highly respectable and wealthy citizen, brother of the Remonstrant professor Episcopius, of Leyden.  The house, an elegant mansion in one of the principal streets, was besieged and after an hour’s resistance carried by storm.  The pretext of the assault was that Arminian preaching was going on within its walls, which was not the fact.  The mistress of the house, half clad, attempted to make her escape by the rear of the building, was pursued by the rabble with sticks and stones, and shrieks of “Kill the Arminian harlot, strike her dead,” until she fortunately found refuge in the house of a neighbouring carpenter.  There the hunted creature fell insensible on the ground, the master of the house refusing to give her up, though the maddened mob surged around it, swearing that if the “Arminian harlot”—­as respectable a matron as lived in the city—­were not delivered over to them, they would tear the house to pieces.  The hope of plunder and of killing Rem Bischop himself drew them at last back to his mansion.  It was thoroughly sacked; every portable article of value, linen, plate, money, furniture, was carried off, the pictures and objects of art destroyed, the house gutted from top to bottom.  A thousand spectators were looking on placidly at the work of destruction as they returned from church, many of them with Bible and Psalm-book in their hands.  The master effected his escape over the roof into an adjoining building.  One of the ringleaders, a carpenter by trade, was arrested carrying an armful of valuable plunder.  He was asked by the magistrate why he had entered the house.  “Out of good zeal,” he replied; “to help beat and kill the Arminians who were holding conventicle there.”  He was further asked why he hated the Arminians so much.  “Are we to suffer such folk here,” he replied, “who preach the vile doctrine that God has created one man for damnation and another for salvation?”—­thus ascribing the doctrine of the church of which he supposed himself a member to the Arminians whom he had been plundering and wished to kill.

Rem Bischop received no compensation for the damage and danger; the general cry in the town being that the money he was receiving from Barneveld and the King of Spain would make him good even if not a stone of the house had been left standing.  On the following Thursday two elders of the church council waited upon and informed him that he must in future abstain from the Communion service.