ourse, a burning one to this
day. To James I., however, is due the credit of having been one
of the earliest and ablest champions against the Temporal Power;
and therefore side by side on our shelves with Bellarmine and
Suarez should stand copies of the _Apology_ and the
_Premonition_--both of them works which can scarcely fail to
raise the King many degrees in the estimation of all who read
them.

But we have yet to see James as a theologian, for on his divinity
he prided himself no less than on his king-craft. The burnings of
Legatt at Smithfield and of Wightman at Lichfield for heretical
opinions are sad blots on the King's memory; for it would seem
that he personally pressed the bishops to proceed to this
extremity, in the case of Legatt at least. Nor in the case of
poor Conrad Vorst did he manifest more toleration or dignity. It
was no concern of his if Vorst was appointed by the States to
succeed Arminius as Professor of Theology at Leyden; yet, deeming
his duty as Defender of the Faith to be bound by no seas, he
actually interfered to prevent it, and rendered Vorst's life a
burden to him, when he might just as reasonably have protested
against the choice of a Grand Lama of Thibet.

Vorst's book--the _Tractatus Theologicus de Deo_, an ugly,
square, brown book of five hundred pages--is as unreadable as it
is unprepossessing. Bayle says that it was shown to the King
whilst out hunting, and that he forthwith read it with such
energy as to be able to despatch within an hour to his resident
at the Hague a detailed list of its heresies. Nothing in his
reign seems to have excited him so much. Not only did he have it
publicly burnt in St. Paul's Churchyard (October 1611), and at
Oxford and Cambridge, but he entreated the States, under the pain
of the loss of his friendship, to banish Vorst from their
dominions altogether. No heretic, he said, ever better deserved
to be burnt, but that he would leave to their Christian wisdom.
"Such a Disquisition deserved the punishment of the Inquisition."
If Vorst remained, no English youths should repair to "so
infected a place" as the University of Leyden.

The States resented at first the interference of the King of
England, and supported Vorst, but the ultimate result of James's
prolonged agitation was that in 1619 the National Synod of Dort
declared Vorst's works to be impious and blasphemous, and their
author unworthy to be an orthodox professor. He was accordingly
banished