Edited sentence: A Roman Catholic could not well have boasted, as Stevin in a political pamphlet did, that he had always been in harmony with the executive power.A Roman Catholic would perhaps not have been so ready as Stevin to deny the value of all authority.But against these considerations it might be urged that a Protestant had no occasion to boast of a harmony most natural to him, while his further remark to the effect that a state church is indispensable, and that those who cannot belong to it on conscientious grounds ought to leave the country rather than show any opposition to its rites, seems rather to indicate the crypto-Catholic.The question whether Stevin, like most of the rest of the prince's followers, belonged to the Protestant creed hardly admits of a categorical answer.The same conclusion is supported by the fact that Stevin, a year before his death, bequeathed a pious legacy to the church of Westkerke in Flanders out of the revenues of which masses were to be said