The questions which agitated men’s minds two centuries and a half ago are not dead yet in the country where they produced such estrangement, violence, and wrong.  No stranger could take them up without encountering hostile criticism from one party or the other.  It may be and has been conceded that Mr. Motley writes as a partisan,—­a partisan of freedom in politics and religion, as he understands freedom.  This secures him the antagonism of one class of critics.  But these critics are themselves partisans, and themselves open to the cross-fire of their antagonists.  M. Groen van Prinsterer, “the learned and distinguished” editor of the “Archives et Correspondance” of the Orange and Nassau family, published a considerable volume, before referred to, in which many of Motley’s views are strongly controverted.  But he himself is far from being in accord with “that eminent scholar,” M. Bakhuyzen van den Brink, whose name, he says, is celebrated enough to need no comment, or with M. Fruin, of whose impartiality and erudition he himself speaks in the strongest terms.  The ground upon which he is attacked is thus stated in his own words:—­

“People have often pretended to find in my writings the deplorable influence of an extreme Calvinism.  The Puritans of the seventeenth century are my fellow-religionists.  I am a sectarian and not an historian.”

It is plain enough to any impartial reader that there are at least plausible grounds for this accusation against Mr. Motley’s critic.  And on a careful examination of the formidable volume, it becomes obvious that Mr. Motley has presented a view of the events and the personages of the stormy epoch with which he is dealing, which leaves a battle-ground yet to be fought over by those who come after him.  The dispute is not and cannot be settled.

The end of all religious discussion has come when one of the parties claims that it is thinking or acting under immediate Divine guidance.  “It is God’s affair, and his honor is touched,” says William Lewis to Prince Maurice.  Mr. Motley’s critic is not less confident in claiming the Almighty as on the side of his own views.  Let him state his own ground of departure:—­

“To show the difference, let me rather say the contrast, between the point of view of Mr. Motley and my own, between the Unitarian and the Evangelical belief.  I am issue of Calvin, child of the Awakening (reveil).  Faithful to the device of the Reformers:  Justification by faith alone, and the Word of God endures eternally.  I consider history from the point of view of Merle d’Aubigne, Chalmers, Guizot.  I desire to be disciple and witness of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

He is therefore of necessity antagonistic to a writer whom he describes in such words as these:—­

     “Mr. Motley is liberal and rationalist.

     “He becomes, in attacking the principle of the Reformation, the
     passionate opponent of the Puritans and of Maurice, the ardent
     apologist of Barnevelt and the Arminians.