Thus within six years after his father's death the youthful soldier who had already given proof of his surpassing military genius had become governor, commander-in-chief, and high admiral, of five of the seven provinces constituting the Confederacy.
At about the same period the great question of Church and State, which Barneveld had always felt to be among the vital problems of the age, and on which his opinions were most decided, came up for partial solution.

It would have been too much to expect the opinion of any statesman to be so much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality.

Toleration of various creeds, including the Roman Catholic, so far as abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlours could be called toleration, was secured, and that was a considerable step in advance of the practice of the sixteenth century.

Burning, hanging, and burying alive of culprits guilty of another creed than the dominant one had become obsolete.

But there was an established creed--the Reformed religion, founded on the Netherland Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.