ition, was an
object of suspicion to both friends and foes. In England it is difficult
to say whether a Jesuit or a Puritan was accounted the more noxious
animal by the dominant party.

In the United Provinces perhaps one half the population was either openly
or secretly attached to the ancient church, while among the Protestant
portion a dire and tragic convulsion was about to break forth, which for
a time at least was to render Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants more
fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists.

The doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense had
long been the prevailing one in the Reformed Church of the revolted
Netherlands, as in those of Scotland, France, Geneva, and the Palatinate.
No doubt up to the period of the truce a majority had acquiesced in that
dogma and its results, although there had always been many preachers to
advocate publicly a milder creed. It was not until the appointment of
Jacob Arminius to the professorship of theology at Leyden, in the place
of Francis Junius, in the year 1603, that a danger of schism in the
Church, seemed impending. Then rose the great Gomarus in his wrath, and
with all the powers of splendid eloquence, profound learning, and the
intense bigotry of conviction, denounced the horrible heresy. Conferences
between the two before the Court of Holland, theological tournaments
between six champions on a side, gallantly led by their respective
chieftains, followed, with the usual result of confirming both parties in
the conviction that to each alone belonged exclusively the truth.

The original influence of Arminius had however been so great that when
the preachers of Holland had been severally called on by a synod to sign
the Heidelberg Catechism, many of them refused. Here was open heresy and
revolt. It was time for the true church to vindicate its authority. The
great war with Spain had been made, so it was urged and honestly
believed, not against the Inquisition, not to prevent Netherlanders from
being burned and buried alive by the old true church, not in defence of
ancient charters, constitutions, and privileges--the precious result of
centuries of popular resistance to despotic force--not to maintain an
amount of civil liberty and local self-government larger in extent than
any then existing in the world, not to assert equality of religion for
all men, but simply to establish the true religion, the one church, the
only possible creed