's father, Gerritt, they said, was a nameless
outcast, a felon, a murderer, who had escaped the punishment due to his
crimes, but had dragged out a miserable existence in the downs, burrowing
like a rabbit in the sand. They had also much to say in disparagement of
all John's connections. Not only was his father a murderer, but his wife,
whom he had married for money, was the child of a most horrible incest,
his sisters were prostitutes, his sons and brothers were debauchees and
drunkards, and, in short, never had a distinguished man a more
uncomfortable and discreditable family-circle than that which surrounded
Barneveld, if the report of his enemies was to be believed. Yet it is
agreeable to reflect that, with all the venom which they had such power
of secreting, these malignant tongues had been unable to destroy the
reputation of the man himself. John's character was honourable and
upright, his intellectual power not disputed even by those who at a later
period hated him the most bitterly. He had been a profound and
indefatigable student from his earliest youth. He had read law at Leyden,
in France, at Heidelberg. Here, in the head-quarters of German Calvinism,
his youthful mind had long pondered the dread themes of foreknowledge,
judgment absolute, free will, and predestination: To believe it worth the
while of a rational and intelligent Deity to create annually several
millions of thinking beings, who were to struggle for a brief period on
earth, and to consume in perpetual brimstone afterwards, while others
were predestined to endless enjoyment, seemed to him an indifferent
exchange for a faith in the purgatory and paradise of Rome. Perplexed in
the extreme, the youthful John bethought himself of an inscription over
the gateway of his famous but questionable great grandfather's house at
Amersfort--'nil scire tutissima fides.' He resolved thenceforth to adopt
a system of ignorance upon matters beyond the flaming walls of the world;
to do the work before him manfully and faithfully while he walked the
earth, and to trust that a benevolent Creator would devote neither him
nor any other man to eternal hellfire. For this most offensive doctrine
he was howled at by the strictly pious, while he earned still deeper
opprobrium by daring to advocate religious toleration: In face of the
endless horrors inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition upon his native
land, he had the hardihood--although a determined Protestant himself--to
c