He was asked if he had not promised during the Truce negotiations so to direct matters that the Catholics with time might obtain public exercise of their religion.

He replied that this was a notorious falsehood and calumny, adding that it ill accorded with the proclamation against the Jesuits drawn up by himself some years after the Truce.  He furthermore stated that it was chiefly by his direction that the discourse of President Jeannin—­urging on part of the French king that liberty of worship might be granted to the Papists—­was kept secret, copies of it not having been furnished even to the commissioners of the Provinces.

His indignant denial of this charge, especially taken in connection with his repeated assertions during the trial, that among the most patriotic Netherlanders during and since the war were many adherents of the ancient church, seems marvellously in contradiction with his frequent and most earnest pleas for liberty of conscience.  But it did not appear contradictory even to his judges nor to any contemporary.  His position had always been that the civil authority of each province was supreme in all matters political or ecclesiastical.  The States-General, all the provinces uniting in the vote, had invited the Catholic provinces on more than one occasion to join the Union, promising that there should be no interference on the part of any states or individuals with the internal affairs religious or otherwise of the provinces accepting the invitation.  But it would have been a gross contradiction of his own principle if he had promised so to direct matters that the Catholics should have public right of worship in Holland where he knew that the civil authority was sure to refuse it, or in any of the other six provinces in whose internal affairs he had no voice whatever.  He was opposed to all tyranny over conscience, he would have done his utmost to prevent inquisition into opinion, violation of domicile, interference with private worship, compulsory attendance in Protestant churches of those professing the Roman creed.  This was not attempted.  No Catholic was persecuted on account of his religion.  Compared with the practice in other countries this was a great step in advance.  Religious tolerance lay on the road to religious equality, a condition which had hardly been imagined then and scarcely exists in Europe even to this day.  But among the men in history whose life and death contributed to the advancement of that blessing, it would be vain to deny that Barneveld occupies a foremost place.

Moreover, it should be remembered that religious equality then would have been a most hazardous experiment.  So long as Church and State were blended, it was absolutely essential at that epoch for the preservation of Protestantism to assign the predominance to the State.  Should the Catholics have obtained religious equality, the probable result would before long have been religious inequality, supremacy of the Catholics in the Church,