himself more firmly upon the right. It was in the monarch's power to
convoke the assembly of the states-general, so loudly demanded by the
whole nation, to abolish the inquisition, to renounce persecution, to
accept the great fact of the Reformation. To do so he must have ceased
to be Philip. To have faltered in attempting to bring him into that
path, the Prince must have ceased to be William of Orange. Had he
succeeded, there would have been no treason and no Republic of Holland.
His conduct at the outbreak of the Antwerp troubles was firm and
sagacious. Even had his duty required him to put down the public
preaching with peremptory violence, he had been furnished with no means
to accomplish the purpose. The rebellion, if it were one, was already
full-grown. It could not be taken by the throat and strangled with one
hand, however firm.

A report that the High Sheriff of Brabant was collecting troops by
command of government, in order to attack the Reformers at their field-
preachings, went far to undo the work already accomplished by the Prince.
The assemblages swelled again from ten or twelve thousand to twenty-five
thousand, the men all providing themselves more thoroughly with weapons
than before. Soon afterwards, the intemperate zeal of another
individual, armed to the teeth--not, however, like the martial sheriff
and his forces, with arquebus and javelin, but with the still more deadly
weapons of polemical theology,--was very near causing a general outbreak.
A peaceful and not very numerous congregation were listening to one of
their preachers in a field outside the town. Suddenly an unknown
individual in plain clothes and with a pragmatical demeanor, interrupted
the discourse by giving a flat contradiction to some of the doctrines
advanced. The minister replied by a rebuke, and a reiteration of the
disputed sentiment.--The stranger, evidently versed in ecclesiastical
matters, volubly and warmly responded. The preacher, a man of humble