The Advocate, anxious and troubled, but undismayed, did his best in the terrible emergency.

He conferred with Prince Maurice on the subject of the Ryswyk secession, and men said that he sought to impress upon him, as chief of the military forces, the necessity of putting down religious schism with the armed hand.
The Prince had not yet taken a decided position.

He was still under the influence of John Uytenbogaert, who with Arminius and the Advocate made up the fateful three from whom deadly disasters were deemed to have come upon the Commonwealth.

He wished to remain neutral.

But no man can be neutral in civil contentions threatening the life of the body politic any more than the heart can be indifferent if the human frame is sawn in two.
"I am a soldier," said Maurice, "not a divine.