That there should be no authority over the King had been settled in England.
Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and afterwards James, having become popes in their own realm, had no great hostility to, but rather an affection for, ancient dogma and splendid ceremonial.

But in the Seven Provinces, even as in France, Germany, and Switzerland, the reform where it had been effected at all had been more thorough, and there was little left of Popish pomp or aristocratic hierarchy.

Nothing could be severer than the simplicity of the Reformed Church, nothing more imperious than its dogma, nothing more infallible than its creed.

It was the true religion, and there was none other.

But to whom belonged the ecclesiastical edifices, the splendid old minsters in the cities--raised by the people's confiding piety and the purchased remission of their sins in a bygone age--and the humbler but beautiful parish churches in every town and village?
To the State; said Barneveld, speaking for government; to the community represented by the states of the provinces, the magistracies of the cities and municipalities.