could not have devised a more pithy formula.

All that was wanting was the axe and faggot to reduce uniformity to practice.
Then liberty of conscience would be complete.
"One must distinguish," said the Ambassador, "between just liberty and unbridled license, and conclude that there is but one truth single and unique.

Those who go about turning their brains into limbecks for distilling new notions in religious matters only distract the union of the Church which makes profession of this unique truth.

If it be permitted to one man to publish the writings and fantasies of a sick spirit and for another moved by Christian zeal to reduce this wanderer 'ad sanam mentem;' why then 'patet locus adversus utrumque,' and the common enemy (the Devil) slips into the fortress." He then proceeded to illustrate this theory on liberty of conscience by allusions to Conrad Vorstius.
This infamous sectary had in fact reached such a pitch of audacity, said the Ambassador, as not only to inveigh against the eternal power of God but to indulge in irony against the honour of his Majesty King James.
And in what way had he scandalized the government of the Republic?
He had dared to say that within its borders there was religious toleration.

He had distinctly averred that in the United Provinces heretics were not punished with death or with corporal chastisement.
"He declares openly," said Carleton, "that contra haereticos etiam vere dictos (ne dum falso et calumniose sic traductos) there is neither sentence of death nor other corporal punishment, so that in order to attract to himself a great following of birds of the name feather he publishes to all the world that here in this country one can live and die a heretic, unpunished, without being arrested and without danger." In order to suppress this reproach upon the Republic at which the Ambassador stood aghast, and to prevent the Vorstian doctrines of religious toleration and impunity of heresy from spreading among "the common people, so subject by their natures to embrace new opinions," he advised of course that "the serpent be sent back to the nest where he was born before the venom had spread through the whole body of the Republic." A week afterwards a long reply was delivered on part of the States-General to the Ambassador's oration.