At about the same period the great question of Church and State, which Barneveld had always felt to be among the vital problems of the age, and on which his opinions were most decided, came up for partial solution.  It would have been too much to expect the opinion of any statesman to be so much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality.  Toleration of various creeds, including the Roman Catholic, so far as abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlours could be called toleration, was secured, and that was a considerable step in advance of the practice of the sixteenth century.  Burning, hanging, and burying alive of culprits guilty of another creed than the dominant one had become obsolete.  But there was an established creed—­the Reformed religion, founded on the Netherland Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.  And there was one established principle then considered throughout Europe the grand result of the Reformation; “Cujus regio ejus religio;” which was in reality as impudent an invasion of human right as any heaven-born dogma of Infallibility.  The sovereign of a country, having appropriated the revenues of the ancient church, prescribed his own creed to his subjects.  In the royal conscience were included the million consciences of his subjects.  The inevitable result in a country like the Netherlands, without a personal sovereign, was a struggle between the new church and the civil government for mastery.  And at this period, and always in Barneveld’s opinion, the question of dogma was subordinate to that of church government.  That there should be no authority over the King had been settled in England.

Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and afterwards James, having become popes in their own realm, had no great hostility to, but rather an affection for, ancient dogma and splendid ceremonial.  But in the Seven Provinces, even as in France, Germany, and Switzerland, the reform where it had been effected at all had been more thorough, and there was little left of Popish pomp or aristocratic hierarchy.  Nothing could be severer than the simplicity of the Reformed Church, nothing more imperious than its dogma, nothing more infallible than its creed.  It was the true religion, and there was none other.  But to whom belonged the ecclesiastical edifices, the splendid old minsters in the cities—­raised by the people’s confiding piety and the purchased remission of their sins in a bygone age—­and the humbler but beautiful parish churches in every town and village?  To the State; said Barneveld, speaking for government; to the community represented by the states of the provinces, the magistracies of the cities and municipalities.  To the Church itself, the one true church represented by its elders, and deacons, and preachers, was the reply.

And to whom belonged the right of prescribing laws and ordinances of public worship, of appointing preachers, church servants, schoolmasters, sextons?  To the Holy Ghost inspiring the Class and the Synod, said the Church.