while the Stadholder stood without a rival at the head of their military
affairs, and so long as there were no fierce disputes as to government
and dogma within the bosom of the Reformed Church, the questions which
were now inflaming the whole population had been allowed to slumber.

The termination of the war and the rise of Arminianism were almost
contemporaneous. The Stadholder, who so unwillingly had seen the
occupation in which he had won so much glory taken from him by the Truce,
might perhaps find less congenial but sufficiently engrossing business as
champion of the Church and of the Union.

The new church--not freedom of worship for different denominations of
Christians, but supremacy of the Church of Heidelberg and Geneva--seemed
likely to be the result of the overthrow of the ancient church. It is
the essence of the Catholic Church to claim supremacy over and immunity
from the civil authority, and to this claim for the Reformed Church, by
which that of Rome had been supplanted, Barneveld was strenuously
opposed.

The Stadholder was backed, therefore, by the Church in its purity, by the
majority of the humbler classes--who found in membership of the oligarchy
of Heaven a substitute for those democratic aspirations on earth which
were effectually suppressed between the two millstones of burgher
aristocracy and military discipline--and by the States-General,
a majority of which were Contra-Remonstrant in their faith.

If the sword is usually an overmatch for the long robe in political
struggles, the cassock has often proved superior to both combined. But
in the case now occupying our attention the cassock was in alliance with
the sword. Clearly the contest was becoming a desperate one for the