And this was the misery of the position.  For it was soon to appear that the King’s definite and final intentions, varied from day to day.  It was almost humorous to find him at that moment condemning all opinions but those of Calvin and Beza in Holland, while his course to the strictest confessors of that creed in England was so ferocious.

But Vorstius was a rival author to his Majesty on subjects treated of by both, so that literary spite of the most venomous kind, stirred into theological hatred, was making a dangerous mixture.  Had a man with the soul and sense of the Advocate sat on the throne which James was regarding at that moment as a professor’s chair, the world’s history would have been changed.

“I fear,” continued Barneveld, “that some of our own precisians have been spinning this coil for us over there, and if the civil authority can be thus countermined, things will go as in Flanders in your time.  Pray continue to be observant, discreet, and moderate.”

The Advocate continued to use his best efforts to smooth the rising waves.  He humoured and even flattered the King, although perpetually denounced by Winwood in his letters to his sovereign as tyrannical, over-bearing, malignant, and treacherous.  He did his best to counsel moderation and mutual toleration, for he felt that these needless theological disputes about an abstract and insoluble problem of casuistry were digging an abyss in which the Republic might be swallowed up for ever.  If ever man worked steadily with the best lights of experience and inborn sagacity for the good of his country and in defence of a constitutional government, horribly defective certainly, but the only legal one, and on the whole a more liberal polity than any then existing, it was Barneveld.  Courageously, steadily, but most patiently, he stood upon that position so vital and daily so madly assailed; the defence of the civil authority against the priesthood.  He felt instinctively and keenly that where any portion of the subjects or citizens of a country can escape from the control of government and obey other head than the lawful sovereignty, whether monarchical or republican, social disorder and anarchy must be ever impending.

“We are still tortured by ecclesiastical disputes,” he wrote a few weeks later to Caron.  “Besides many libels which have appeared in print, the letters of his Majesty and the harangues of Winwood have been published; to what end you who know these things by experience can judge.  The truth of the matter of Vorstius is that he was legally called in July 1610, that he was heard last May before My Lords the States with six preachers to oppose him, and in the same month duly accepted and placed in office.  He has given no public lectures as yet.  You will cause this to be known on fitting opportunity.  Believe and cause to be believed that his Majesty’s letters and Sir R. Winwood’s propositions have been and shall be well considered, and that I am working