preachers and to insist on a separation was fast driving the state to
perdition. They warmly recommended mutual toleration and harmony.
Grotius exhausted learning and rhetoric to prove that the Five Points
were not inconsistent with salvation nor with the constitution of the
United Provinces.

The Stadholder grew impatient at last and clapped his hand on his rapier.

"No need here," he said, "of flowery orations and learned arguments.
With this good sword I will defend the religion which my father planted
in these Provinces, and I should like to see the man who is going to
prevent me!"

The words had an heroic ring in the ears of such as are ever ready to
applaud brute force, especially when wielded by a prince. The argumentum
ad ensem, however, was the last plea that William the Silent would have
been likely to employ on such an occasion, nor would it have been easy to
prove that the Reformed religion had been "planted" by one who had drawn
the sword against the foreign tyrant, and had made vast sacrifices for
his country's independence years before abjuring communion with the Roman
Catholic Church.

When swords are handled by the executive in presence of civil assemblies
there is usually but one issue to be expected.

Moreover, three whales had recently been stranded at Scheveningen,
one of them more than sixty feet long, and men wagged their beards
gravely as they spoke of the event, deeming it a certain presage of
civil commotions. It was remembered that at the outbreak of the great
war two whales had been washed ashore in the Scheldt. Although some