This was the German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom.

Neither prince nor peasant stirred in behalf of the struggling Christians in the United Provinces, battling, year after year, knee-deep in blood, amid blazing cities and inundated fields, breast to breast with the yellow jerkined pikemen of Spain and Italy, with the axe and the faggot and the rack of the Holy Inquisition distinctly visible behind them.

Such were the realities which occupied the Netherlanders in those days, not watery beams of theological moonshine, fantastical catechism-making, intermingled with scenes of riot and wantonness, which drove old John of Nassau half frantic; with banquetting and guzzling, drinking and devouring, with unchristian flaunting and wastefulness of apparel, with extravagant and wanton dancing, and other lewd abominations; all which, the firm old reformer prophesied, would lead to the destruction of Germany.
For the mass, slow moving but apparently irresistible, of Spanish and papistical absolutism was gradually closing over Christendom.

The Netherlands were the wedge by which alone the solid bulk could be riven asunder.

It was the cause of German, of French, of English liberty, for which the Provinces were contending.