The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1566 part 2 | Page 7

of
agreement, upon the basis of Margaret's concessions. Public preaching,
according to the Reformed religion, had already taken place within the
city. Upon the 22d, possession had been taken of at least three churches.
The senate had deputed pensionary Wesenbeck to expostulate with the
ministers, for the magistrates were at that moment not able to command.
Taffin, the Walloon preacher, had been tractable, and had agreed to
postpone his exercises. He furthermore had accompanied the
pensionary to the cathedral, in order to persuade Herman Modet that it
would be better for him likewise to defer his intended ministrations.
They had found that eloquent enthusiast already in the great church,
burning with impatience to ascend upon the ruins, and quite unable to

resist the temptation of setting a Flemish psalm and preaching a
Flemish sermon within the walls which had for so many centuries been
vocal only to the Roman tongue and the Roman ritual. All that he
would concede to the entreaties of his colleague and of the magistrate,
was that his sermon should be short. In this, however, he had overrated
his powers of retention, for the sermon not only became a long one, but
he had preached another upon the afternoon of the same day. The city
of Antwerp, therefore, was clearly within the seventh clause of the
treaty of the 24th August, for preaching had taken place in the cathedral,
previously to the signing of that Accord.
Upon the 2d September, therefore, after many protracted interview with
the heads of the Reformed religion, the Prince drew up sixteen articles
of agreement between them, the magistrates and the government, which
were duly signed and exchanged. They were conceived in the true spirit
of statesmanship, and could the rulers of the land have elevated
themselves to the mental height of William de Nassau, had Philip been
able of comprehending such a mind, the Prince, who alone possessed
the power in those distracted times of governing the wills of all men,
would have enabled the monarch to transmit that beautiful cluster of
provinces, without the lose of a single jewel, to the inheritors of his
crown.
If the Prince were playing a game, he played it honorably. To have
conceived the thought of religious toleration in an age of universal
dogmatism; to have labored to produce mutual respect among
conflicting opinions, at a period when many Dissenters were as bigoted
as the orthodox, and when most Reformers fiercely proclaimed not
liberty for every Christian doctrine, but only a new creed in place of all
the rest, --to have admitted the possibility of several roads, to heaven,
when zealots of all creeds would shut up all pathways but their own; if
such sentiments and purposes were sins, they would have been
ill-exchanged for the best virtues of the age. Yet, no doubt, this was his
crying offence in the opinion of many contemporaries. He was now
becoming apostate from the ancient Church, but he had long thought
that Emperors, Kings, and Popes had taken altogether too much care of
men's souls in times past, and had sent too many of them prematurely
to their great account. He was equally indisposed to grant full-powers
for the same purpose to Calvinists, Lutherans, or Anabaptists. "He

censured the severity of our theologians," said a Catholic contemporary,
accumulating all the religious offences of the Prince in a single
paragraph, "because they keep strictly the constitutions of the Church
without conceding a single point to their adversaries; he blamed the
Calvinists as seditious and unruly people, yet nevertheless had a horror
for the imperial edicts which condemned them to death; he said it was a
cruel thing to take a man's life for sustaining an erroneous opinion; in
short, he fantasied in his imagination a kind of religion, half Catholic,
half Reformed, in order to content all persons; a system which would
have been adopted could he have had his way." This picture, drawn by
one of his most brilliant and bitter enemies, excites our admiration
while intended to inspire aversion.
The articles of agreement at Antwerp thus promulgated assigned three
churches to the different sects of reformers, stipulated that no attempt
should be made by Catholics or Protestants to disturb the religious
worship of each other, and provided that neither by mutual taunts in
their sermons, nor by singing street ballads, together with improper
allusions and overt acts of hostility, should the good-fellowship which
ought to reign between brethren and fellow-citizens, even although
entertaining different opinions as to religious rites and doctrines, be for
the future interrupted.
This was the basis upon which the very brief religious peace, broken
almost as soon as established, was concluded by William of Orange,
not only at Antwerp, but at Utrecht, Amsterdam, and other principal
cities within his government. The Prince,