He had done his best practically to
avert personal bickerings among the clergy. He had been, so far as lay in
his power, as friendly to Remonstrants as to Contra-Remonstrants, to
Polyander and Festus Hommius as to Uytenbogaert and Episcopius. He had
almost finished a negotiation with Councillor Kromhout for the peaceable
delivery of the Cloister Church on the Thursday preceding the Sunday on
which it had been forcibly seized by the Contra-Remonstrants.

When asked by one of his judges how he presumed to hope for toleration
between two parties, each of which abhorred the other's opinions, and
likened each other to Turks and devil-worshippers, he replied that he had
always detested and rebuked those mutual revilings by every means in his
power, and would have wished to put down such calumniators of either
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 ordi