Heresy must be trampled down.  The churches called for a national synod, and they did this as by divine right.  “My Lords the States-General must observe,” they said, “that this assembly now demanded is not a human institution but an ordinance of the Holy Ghost in its community, not depending upon any man’s authority, but proceeding from God to the community.”  They complained that the true church was allowed to act only through the civil government, and was thus placed at a disadvantage compared even with Catholics and other sects, whose proceedings were winked at.  “Thus the true church suffered from its apparent and public freedom, and hostile sects gained by secret connivance.”

A crisis was fast approaching.  The one church claimed infallibility and superiority to the civil power.  The Holy Ghost was placed in direct, ostentatious opposition to My Lords the States-General.  It was for Netherlanders to decide whether, after having shaken off the Holy Inquisition, and subjected the old true church to the public authority, they were now to submit to the imperious claims of the new true church.

There were hundreds of links connecting the Church with the State.  In that day a divorce between the two was hardly possible or conceivable.  The system of Congregationalism so successfully put into practice soon afterwards in the wilderness of New England, and to which so much of American freedom political as well as religious is due, was not easy to adopt in an old country like the Netherlands.  Splendid churches and cathedrals, the legal possession of which would be contended for by rival sects, could scarcely be replaced by temporary structures of lath and plaster, or by humble back parlours of mechanics’ shops.  There were questions of property of complicated nature.  Not only the states and the communities claimed in rivalry the ownership of church property, but many private families could show ancient advowsons and other claims to present or to patronize, derived from imperial or ducal charters.

So long as there could be liberty of opinion within the Church upon points not necessarily vital, open schism could be avoided, by which the cause of Protestantism throughout Europe must be weakened, while at the same time subordination of the priesthood to the civil authority would be maintained.  But if the Holy Ghost, through the assembled clergy, were to dictate an iron formulary to which all must conform, to make laws for church government which every citizen must obey, and to appoint preachers and school-masters from whom alone old and young could receive illumination and instruction religious or lay, a theocracy would be established which no enlightened statesman could tolerate.

The States-General agreed to the synod, but imposed a condition that there should be a revision of Creed and Catechism.  This was thundered down with one blast.  The condition implied a possibility that the vile heresy of Arminius might be correct.  An unconditional synod was demanded.  The Heidelberg Creed and Netherland Catechism were sacred, infallible, not to be touched.  The answer of the government, through the mouth of Barneveld, was that “to My Lords the States-General as the foster-fathers and protectors of the churches every right belonged.”