For this most offensive doctrine he was howled at by the strictly pious, while he earned still deeper opprobrium by daring to advocate religious toleration: In face of the endless horrors inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition upon his native land, he had the hardihood--although a determined Protestant himself--to claim for Roman Catholics the right to exercise their religion in the free States on equal terms with those of the reformed faith.

"Anyone," said his enemies, "could smell what that meant who had not a wooden nose." In brief, he was a liberal Christian, both in theory and practice, and he nobly confronted in consequence the wrath of bigots on both sides.
At a later period the most zealous Calvinists called him Pope John, and the opinions to which he was to owe such appellations had already been formed in his mind.
After completing his very thorough legal studies, he had practised as an advocate in Holland and Zeeland.

An early defender of civil and religious freedom, he had been brought at an early day into contact with William the Silent, who recognized his ability.

He had borne a snap-hance on his shoulder as a volunteer in the memorable attempt to relieve Haarlem, and was one of the few survivors of that bloody night.

He had stood outside the walls of Leyden in company of the Prince of Orange when that magnificent destruction of the dykes had taken place by which the city had been saved from the fate impending over it.