persuasion by the civil authority, but the iniquity of the times and the
exasperation of men's humours had prevented him.

Being perpetually goaded by one judge after another as to his
disrespectful conduct towards the King of Great Britain, and asked why
his Majesty had not as good right to give the advice of 1617 as the
recommendation of tolerance in 1613, he scrupulously abstained, as he had
done in all his letters, from saying a disrespectful word as to the
glaring inconsistency between the two communications, or to the hostility
manifested towards himself personally by the British ambassador. He had
always expressed the hope, he said, that the King would adhere to his
original position, but did not dispute his right to change his mind, nor
the good faith which had inspired his later letters. It had been his
object, if possible, to reconcile the two different systems recommended
by his Majesty into one harmonious whole.

His whole aim had been to preserve the public peace as it was the duty of
every magistrate, especially in times of such excitement, to do. He
could never comprehend why the toleration of the Five Points should be a
danger to the Reformed religion. Rather, he thought, it would strengthen
the Church and attract many Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, and other
good patriots into its pale. He had always opposed the compulsory
acceptance by the people of the special opinions of scribes and doctors.
He did not consider, he said, the difference in doctrine on this disputed
point between the Contra-Remonstrants and Remonstrants as one-tenth the
value of the civil authority and its right to make laws and ordinances
regulating ecclesiastical affairs.

He believed the great bulwark of the independence of the country to be
the Reformed Church, and his efforts had ever been to strengthen that