The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1618-19 | Page 7

molest them if they carried themselves peaceably. So they resolved
to go without the seal, for, said their magistrate very wisely, "if there
should be a purpose or desire to wrong them, a seal would not serve
their turn though it were as broad as the house-floor."
Before they left Leyden, their pastor preached to them a farewell
sermon, which for loftiness of spirit and breadth of vision has hardly a

parallel in that age of intolerance. He laid down the principle that
criticism of the Scriptures had not been exhausted merely because it
had been begun; that the human conscience was of too subtle a nature
to be imprisoned for ever in formulas however ingeniously devised;
that the religious reformation begun a century ago was not completed;
and that the Creator had not necessarily concluded all His revelations to
mankind.
The words have long been familiar to students of history, but they can
hardly be too often laid to heart.
Noble words, worthy to have been inscribed over the altar of the first
church to be erected by the departing brethren, words to bear fruit after
centuries should go by. Had not the deeply injured and misunderstood
Grotius already said, "If the trees we plant do not shade us, they will
yet serve for our descendants?"
Yet it is passing strange that the preacher of that sermon should be the
recent champion of the Contra-Remonstrants in the great controversy;
the man who had made himself so terrible to the pupils of the gentle
and tolerant Arminius.
And thus half of that English congregation went down to Delftshaven,
attended by the other half who were to follow at a later period with
their beloved pastor. There was a pathetic leave-taking. Even many of
the Hollanders, mere casual spectators, were in tears.
Robinson, kneeling on the deck of the little vessel, offered a prayer and
a farewell. Who could dream that this departure of an almost nameless
band of emigrants to the wilderness was an epoch in the world's history?
Yet these were the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, the founders of
what was to be the mightiest republic of modern history, mighty and
stable because it had been founded upon an idea.
They were not in search of material comfort and the chances of
elevating their condition, by removing from an overpeopled country to
an organized Commonwealth, offering a wide field for pauper
labourers. Some of them were of good social rank and highest
education, most of them in decent circumstances, none of them in
absolute poverty. And a few years later they were to be joined by a far
larger company with leaders and many brethren of ancient birth and
landed possessions, men of "education, figure; and estate," all ready to
convert property into cash and to place it in joint-stock, not as the basis

of promising speculation, but as the foundation of a church.
It signifies not how much or how little one may sympathize with their
dogma or their discipline now. To the fact that the early settlement of
that wilderness was by self-sacrificing men of earnestness and faith,
who were bent on "advancing the Gospel of Christ in remote parts of
the world," in the midst of savage beasts, more savage men, and
unimaginable difficulties and dangers, there can be little doubt that the
highest forms of Western civilization are due. Through their
provisional theocracy, the result of the independent church system was
to establish the true purport of the Reformation, absolute religious
equality. Civil and political equality followed as a matter of course.
Two centuries and a half have passed away.
There are now some seventy or eighty millions of the English-speaking
race on both sides the Atlantic, almost equally divided between the
United Kingdom and the United Republic, and the departure of those
outcasts of James has interest and significance for them all.
Most fitly then, as a distinguished American statesman has remarked,
does that scene on board the little English vessel, with the English
pastor uttering his farewell blessing to a handful of English exiles for
conscience sake; depicted on canvas by eminent artists, now adorn the
halls of the American Congress and of the British Parliament.
Sympathy with one of the many imperishable bonds of union between
the two great and scarcely divided peoples.
We return to Barneveld in his solitary prison.

CHAPTER XX
.
Barneveld's Imprisonment--Ledenberg's Examination and Death--
Remonstrance of De Boississe--Aerssens admitted to the order of
Knights--Trial of the Advocate--Barneveld's Defence--The States
proclaim a Public Fast--Du Maurier's Speech before the Assembly--
Barneveld's Sentence--Barneveld prepares for Death--Goes to
Execution.
The Advocate had been removed within a few days after the arrest from
the chamber in Maurice's apartments, where he had originally been
confined, and was now in another building.

It was not