Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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assassinated by an obscure fanatic (1584). f1239 His second son, Maurice, a
strict Calvinist (d. 1625), carried on and completed the conflict (1609).
The horrible barbarities practised upon men, women, and unborn children,
especially during the governorship of that bloodhound, the Duke of Alva,
from 1567–1573, are almost beyond belief. We quote from the classical
history of Motley: “The number of Netherlanders who were burned,
strangled, beheaded, or buried alive, in obedience to the edicts of Charles
V., and for the offences of reading the Scriptures, of looking askance at a
graven image, or of ridiculing the actual presence of the body and blood of
Christ in a wafer, have been placed as high as one hundred thousand by
distinguished authorities, and have never been put at a lower mark than
fifty thousand. The Venetian envoy Navigero placed the number of victims
in the provinces of Holland and Friesland alone at thirty thousand, and this
in 1546, ten years before the abdication, and five before the promulgation
of the hideous edict of 1550.” f1240 Of the administration of the Duke of
Alva, Motley says: “On his journey from the Netherlands, he is said to have
boasted that he had caused eighteen thousand six hundred inhabitants of
the provinces to be executed during the period of his government. The
number of those who had perished by battle, siege, starvation, and
massacre, defied computation … . After having accomplished the military
enterprise [in Portugal] entrusted to him, he fell into a lingering fever, at
the termination of which he was so much reduced that he was only kept
alive by milk which he drank from a woman’s breast. Such was the gentle
second childhood of the man who had almost literally been drinking blood
for seventy years. He died on the 12th of December, 1582.” f1241
The Bible, with the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, was
the spiritual guide of the Protestants, and inspired them with that heroic
courage which triumphed over the despotism of Spain, and raised Holland
to an extraordinary degree of political, commercial, and literary
eminence. f1242
The Belgic Confession of 1561 was prepared by Guido de Brès, and
revised by Francis Junius, a student of Calvin. It became the recognized
symbol of the Reformed Churches of Holland and Belgium.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Arminianism rose as a
necessary and wholesome reaction against scholastic Calvinism, but was
defeated in the Synod of Dort, 1619, which adopted the five knotty canons
of unconditional predestination, limited atonement, total depravity,