The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1609-15 | Page 9

Barneveld
now proposed and carried the appointment of Maurice of Nassau to the
stadholdership of Holland. This was done against great opposition and
amid fierce debate. Soon afterwards Barneveld was vehemently urged
by the nobles and regents of the cities of Holland to accept the post of
Advocate of that province. After repeatedly declining the arduous and
most responsible office, he was at last induced to accept it. He did it
under the remarkable condition that in case any negotiation should be
undertaken for the purpose of bringing back the Province of Holland
under the dominion of the King of Spain, he should be considered as
from that moment relieved from the service.
His brother Elias Barneveld succeeded him as Pensionary of Rotterdam,
and thenceforth the career of the Advocate is identical with the history
of the Netherlands. Although a native of Utrecht, he was competent to
exercise such functions in Holland, a special and ancient convention
between those two provinces allowing the citizens of either to enjoy
legal and civic rights in both. Gradually, without intrigue or inordinate
ambition, but from force of circumstances and 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.
Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and afterwards James, having become popes in
their own realm, had no great hostility to, but rather an affection for,
ancient dogma and splendid ceremonial. But in the Seven Provinces,
even as in France, Germany, and Switzerland, the reform where it had
been effected at all had been more thorough, and there was little left of
Popish pomp or aristocratic hierarchy. Nothing could be severer than
the simplicity of the Reformed Church, nothing more imperious than its
dogma, nothing more infallible than its creed. It was the true religion,
and there was none other. But to whom belonged the ecclesiastical
edifices, the splendid old minsters in the cities--raised by the people's

confiding piety and the purchased remission of their sins in a bygone
age--and the humbler but beautiful parish churches in every town and
village? To the State; said Barneveld, speaking for government; to the
community represented by the states of the provinces, the magistracies
of the cities and municipalities. To the Church itself, the one true
church represented by its elders, and deacons, and preachers, was the
reply.
And to whom belonged the right of prescribing laws and ordinances of
public worship, of appointing preachers, church servants,
schoolmasters, sextons? To the Holy Ghost inspiring the Class and the
Synod, said the Church.
To the civil authority, said the magistrates, by