There could be but one church. On that Remonstrants and Contra-
Remonstrants were agreed. But should the five Points or the Seven
Points obtain the mastery? Should that framework of hammered iron, the
Confession and Catechism, be maintained in all its rigidity around the
sheepfold, or should the disciples of the arch-heretic Arminius, the
salvation-mongers, be permitted to prowl within it?

Was Barneveld, who hated the Reformed religion (so men told each other),
and who believed in nothing, to continue dictator of the whole Republic
through his influence over one province, prescribing its religious dogmas
and laying down its laws; or had not the time come for the States-General
to vindicate the rights of the Church, and to crush for ever the
pernicious principle of State sovereignty and burgher oligarchy?

The abyss was wide and deep, and the wild waves were raging more madly
every hour. The Advocate, anxious and troubled, but undismayed, did his
best in the terrible emergency. He conferred with Prince Maurice on the
subject of the Ryswyk secession, and men said that he sought to impress
upon him, as chief of the military forces, the necessity of putting down
religious schism with the armed hand.

The Prince had not yet taken a decided position. He was still under the
influence of John Uytenbogaert, who with Arminius and the Advocate made
up the fateful three from whom deadly disasters were deemed to have come
upon the Commonwealth. He wished to remain neutral. But no man can be
neutral in civil contentions threatening the life of the body politic any
more than the heart can be indifferent if the human frame is sawn in two.

"I am a soldier," said Maurice, "not a divine. These are matters of