nd the commanding power of the
man, the native authority stamped upon his forehead, he became the
political head of the Confederacy. He created and maintained a system of
public credit absolutely marvellous in the circumstances, by means of
which an otherwise impossible struggle was carried to a victorious end.

When the stadholderate of the provinces of Gelderland, Utrecht, and
Overyssel became vacant, it was again Barneveld's potent influence and
sincere attachment to the House of Nassau that procured the election of
Maurice to those posts. Thus within six years after his father's death
the youthful soldier who had already given proof of his surpassing
military genius had become governor, commander-in-chief, and high
admiral, of five of the seven provinces constituting the Confederacy.

At about the same period the great question of Church and State, which
Barneveld had always felt to be among the vital problems of the age, and
on which his opinions were most decided, came up for partial solution. It
would have been too much to expect the opinion of any statesman to be so
much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality. Toleration of
various creeds, including the Roman Catholic, so far as abstinence from
inquisition into consciences and private parlours could be called
toleration, was secured, and that was a considerable step in advance of
the practice of the sixteenth century. Burning, hanging, and burying
alive of culprits guilty of another creed than the dominant one had
become obsolete. But there was an established creed--the Reformed
religion, founded on the Netherland Confession and the Heidelberg
Catechism. And there was one established principle then considered
throughout Europe the grand result of the Reformation; "Cujus regio ejus
religio;" which was in reality as impudent an invasion of human right as
any heaven-born dogma of Infallibility. The sovereign of a country,
having appropriated the revenues of the ancient church, prescribed his
own creed to his subjects. In the royal conscience were included the
million consciences of his subjects. The inevitable result in a country
like the Netherlands, without a personal sovereign, was a struggle
between the new church and the civil government for mastery. And at this
period, and always in Barneveld's opinion, the question of dogma was
subordinate to that of church government. That there should be no
authority over the King had been settled in England