History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

and seventeenth centuries unless the shoot of
Protestantism had been grafted upon it, and new
sap infused into the old decaying charters, so the
talents of William of Orange, varied, beautiful, and
brilliant though they were, unless linked with
something diviner, could not have evolved that
noble character and done those great deeds which
have made the name of William the Silent one of
the brightest on the page of history. Humanity,
however richly endowed with genius, is a weak
thing in itself; it needs to be grafted with a higher
Power in order to reach the full measure of
greatness. In the case of William of Orange it was
so grafted. It was his power of realising One
unseen, whose will he obeyed, and on whose arm
he leaned, that constituted the secret of his
strength. He was the soldier, the statesman, the
patriot; but before all he was the Christian. The
springs of his greatness lay in his faith. Hence his
lofty aims, which, rising high above fame, above
power, above all the ordinary objects of ambition,
aspired to the only and supreme good. Hence, too,
that inflexible principle which enabled him,
without turning to the right or to the left, to go
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