Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of
hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker
dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, the
Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden shoes forgot the cracks in his
pinkie, while each paused to hold high converse with friend or foe on
fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge; losing himself in wandering
mazes whence there was no issue. Province against province, city against
city, family against family; it was one vast scene of bickering,
denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual excommunication and hatred.

Alas! a generation of mankind before, men had stood banded together to
resist, with all the might that comes from union, the fell spirit of the
Holy Inquisition, which was dooming all who had wandered from the ancient
fold or resisted foreign tyranny to the axe, the faggot, the living
grave. There had been small leisure then for men who fought for
Fatherland, and for comparative liberty of conscience, to tear each
others' characters in pieces, and to indulge in mutual hatreds and
loathing on the question of predestination.

As a rule the population, especially of the humbler classes, and a great
majority of the preachers were Contra-Remonstrant; the magistrates, the
burgher patricians, were Remonstrant. In Holland the controlling
influence was Remonstrant; but Amsterdam and four or five other cities of
that province held to the opposite doctrine. These cities formed
therefore a small minority in the States Assembly of Holland sustained by
a large majority in the States-General. The Province of Utrecht was
almost unanimously Remonstrant. The five other provinces were decidedly
Contra-Remonstrant.

It is obvious therefore that the influence of Barneveld, hitherto so all-