commonwealths of England, of Holland, and of America, with a contempt
of toil, danger, and death which enabled them to accomplish things
almost supernatural.

No uncouthness of phraseology, no unlovely austerity of deportment,
could, except to vulgar minds, make that sublime enthusiasm ridiculous,
which on either side the ocean ever confronted tyranny with dauntless
front, and welcomed death on battle-field, scaffold, or rack with perfect
composure.

The early puritan at least believed. The very intensity of his belief
made him--all unconsciously to himself, and narrowed as was his view of
his position--the great instrument by which the widest human liberty was
to be gained for all mankind.

The elected favourite of the King of kings feared the power of no earthly
king. Accepting in rapture the decrees of a supernatural tyranny, he
rose on mighty wings above the reach of human wrath. Prostrating himself
before a God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice, be naturally
imitated the attributes which he believed to be divine. It was
inevitable, therefore, that Barneveld, and those who thought with him,
when they should attempt to force the children of Belial into the company
of the elect and to drive the faithful out of their own churches, should
be detested as bitterly as papists had ever been.

Had Barneveld's intellect been broad enough to imagine in a great
republic the separation of Church and State, he would deserve a tenderer
sympathy, but he would have been far in advance of his age. It is not
cheerful to see so powerful an intellect and so patriotic a character
daring to entrust the relations between man and his Maker to the decree