ower to save.

In the year 1609, died John, the last sovereign of Cleves and Juliers,
and Jacob Arminius, Doctor of Divinity at Leyden. It would be difficult
to imagine two more entirely dissimilar individuals of the human family
than this lunatic duke and that theological professor. And yet, perhaps,
the two names, more concisely than those of any other mortals, might
serve as an index to the ghastly chronicle over which a coming generation
was to shudder. The death of the duke was at first thought likely to
break off the negotiations for truce. The States-General at once declared
that they would permit no movements on the part of the Spanish party to
seize the inheritance in behalf of the Catholic claimants. Prince
Maurice, nothing loth to make use of so well-timed an event in order to
cut for ever the tangled skein at the Hague, was for marching forthwith
into the duchies.

But the archdukes gave such unequivocal assurances of abstaining from
interference, and the desire for peace was so strong both in the obedient
and in the United Provinces, that the question of the duchies was
postponed. It was to serve as both torch and fuel for one of the longest
and most hideous tragedies that had ever disgraced humanity. A thirty
years' war of demons was, after a brief interval, to succeed the forty
years' struggle between slaves and masters, which had just ended in the
recognition of Dutch independence.

The gentle Arminius was in his grave, but a bloody harvest was fast
ripening from the seeds which he had sown. That evil story must find its
place in the melancholy chapter where the fortunes of the Dutch republic
are blended with the grim chronicle of the thirty years' war. Until the
time arrives for retracing the course of those united transactions to
their final termination in the peace of Westphalia, it is premature to
characterize an epoch which, at the moment with which we are now
occupied, had not fairly begun.

The Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists, and
of filling the soul of man with vilest arrogance and confidence in good
works; while the Arminians complained that the God of the Gomarites was
an unjust God, himself the origin of sin.

The disputes on these themes had been perpetual in the provinces ever
since the early days of the Reformation. Of late, however, the acrimony
of theological conflict had been growing day by day more intense. It was
the eternal struggle of religious dog