History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

of thousands of their brethren hanged on gibbets,
burned at stakes, or slain in battle, their mothers,
wives, and daughters subjected to horrible outrage
and murder, all would have been endured in vain.
If their desire of peace should reduce them into a
compromise with the tyrant, it would assuredly
happen that the abhorred yoke of Spain would yet
be riveted upon their necks. The conflict, it was
true, was one of the most awful that nation had
ever been called to wage, but the part of wisdom
was to fight it out to the end, assured that, come
when it might, the end would be good; the
righteous King would crown them with victory.
These words, not less wise than heroic, revived the
spirits of the Dutch.
At this stage of the struggle (1573) a question
of the gravest kind came up for discussion --
namely, the public toleration of the Roman
worship. In the circumstances of the Netherlanders
the delicacy of this question was equal to its
difficulty. It was not proposed to proscribe belief in
the Romish dogmas, or to punish any one for his
faith; it was not proposed even to forbid the
374