into the dust, he would have no Calvinist inquisition set up in its
place. Earnestly a convert to the Reformed religion, but hating and
denouncing only what was corrupt in the ancient Church, he would not
force men, with fire and sword, to travel to heaven upon his own road.
Thought should be toll-free. Neither monk nor minister should burn,
drown, or hang his fellow-creatures, when argument or expostulation
failed to redeem them from error. It was no small virtue, in that age,
to rise to such a height. We know what Calvinists, Zwinglians,
Lutherans, have done in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Switzerland, and
almost a century later in New England. It is, therefore, with increased
veneration that we regard this large and truly catholic mind. His
tolerance proceeded from no indifference. No man can read his private
writings, or form a thorough acquaintance with his interior life, without
recognizing him as a deeply religious man. He had faith unfaltering in
God. He had also faith in man and love for his brethren. It was no
wonder that in that age of religious bigotry he should have been
assaulted on both sides. While the Pope excommunicated him as a heretic,
and the King set a price upon his head as a rebel, the fanatics of the
new religion denounced him as a godless man. Peter Dathenus, the
unfrocked monk of Poperingen, shrieked out in his pulpit that the
"Prince of Orange cared nothing either for God or for religion."

The death of Requesens had offered the first opening through which the
watchful Prince could hope to inflict a wound in the vital part of
Spanish authority in the Netherlands. The languor of Philip and the
procrastinating counsel of the dull Hopper unexpectedly widened the
opening. On the 24th of March letters were written by his Majesty to the
states-general, to the provincial estates, and to the courts of justice,
instructing them that, until further orders, they were all to obey the
Council of State. The King was confident that all would do their utmost