It could not be taken by the throat and strangled with one hand, however firm.
A report that the High Sheriff of Brabant was collecting troops by command of government, in order to attack the Reformers at their field-preachings, went far to undo the work already accomplished by the Prince.

The assemblages swelled again from ten or twelve thousand to twenty-five thousand, the men all providing themselves more thoroughly with weapons than before.

Soon afterwards, the intemperate zeal of another individual, armed to the teeth--not, however, like the martial sheriff and his forces, with arquebus and javelin, but with the still more deadly weapons of polemical theology,--was very near causing a general outbreak.

A peaceful and not very numerous congregation were listening to one of their preachers in a field outside the town.

Suddenly an unknown individual in plain clothes and with a pragmatical demeanor, interrupted the discourse by giving a flat contradiction to some of the doctrines advanced.