But it was the seventeenth and not the nineteenth century.
Moreover, if there were any meaning in words, the 13th Article of Union, reserving especially the disposition over religious matters to each province, had been wisely intended to prevent the possibility of such tyranny.
When the letters of invitation to the separate states and to others were drawing up in the general assembly, the representatives of the three states left the chamber.

A solitary individual from Holland remained however, a burgomaster of Amsterdam.
Uytenbogaert, conversing with Barneveld directly afterwards, advised him to accept the vote.

Yielding to the decision of the majority, it would be possible, so thought the clergyman, for the great statesman so to handle matters as to mould the Synod to his will, even as he had so long controlled the States-Provincial and the States-General.
"If you are willing to give away the rights of the land," said the Advocate very sharply, "I am not." Probably the priest's tactics might have proved more adroit than the stony opposition on which Barneveld was resolved.
But it was with the aged statesman a matter of principle, not of policy.
His character and his personal pride, the dignity of opinion and office, his respect for constitutional law, were all at stake.
Shallow observers considered the struggle now taking place as a personal one.

Lovers of personal government chose to look upon the Advocate's party as a faction inspired with an envious resolve to clip the wings of the Stadholder, who was at last flying above their heads.
There could be no doubt of the bitter animosity between the two men.
There could be no doubt that jealousy was playing the part which that master passion will ever play in all the affairs of life.

But there could be no doubt either that a difference of principle as wide as the world separated the two antagonists.
Even so keen an observer as Dudley Carleton, while admitting the man's intellectual power and unequalled services, could see nothing in the Advocate's present course but prejudice, obstinacy, and the insanity of pride.