he supplications of ambassadors, the protests of
individuals, the arguments of statesmen, were alike unavailing
to stop the torrent of despotism and injustice. The synod of
Dort was opened on the 13th of November, 1618. Theology was
mystified; religion disgraced; Christianity outraged. And after
one hundred and fifty-two sittings, during six months' display
of ferocity and fraud, the solemn mockery was closed on the 9th
of May, 1619, by the declaration of its president, that "its
miraculous labors had made hell tremble."

Proscriptions, banishments, and death were the natural consequences
of this synod. The divisions which it had professed to extinguish
were rendered a thousand times more violent than before. Its
decrees did incalculable ill to the cause they were meant to
promote. The Anglican Church was the first to reject the canons
of Dort with horror and contempt. The Protestants of France and
Germany, and even Geneva, the nurse and guardian of Calvinism,
were shocked and disgusted, and unanimously softened down the
rigor of their respective creeds. But the moral effects of this
memorable conclave were too remote to prevent the sacrifice which
almost immediately followed the celebration of its rites. A trial
by twenty-four prejudiced enemies, by courtesy called judges,
which in its progress and its result throws judicial dignity into
scorn, ended in the condemnation of Barneveldt and his fellow
patriots, for treason against the liberties they had vainly labored
to save. Barneveldt died on the scaffold by the hands of the
executioner on the 13th of May, 1619, in the seventy-second year
of his age. Grotius and Hoogerbeets were sentenced to perpetual
imprisonment. Ledenberg committed suicide in his cell, sooner
than brave the tortures which he anticipated at the hands of
his enemies.

Many more pages than we are able to afford sentences might be
devoted to the details of these iniquitous proceedings, and an
account of their awful consummation. The pious heroism of Barneveldt
was never excelled by any martyr to the most holy cause. He appealed
to Maurice against the unjust sentence which condemned him to death;
but he scorned to beg his life. He met his fate with such temperate
courage as was to be expected from the dignified energy of his
life. His last words were worthy a philosopher whose thoughts,
even in his latest moments, were superior to mere personal hope
or fear, and turned to the deep mysteries of his be