HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 127

CHAPTER IV.

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF BREUCKELEN.
1628-1664

IT has often been claimed as a peculiar distinction of the Puritan settlers of New England, that their prominent aim, and chief care, in settling those desert regions, was the establishment of religious and educational privileges. Yet, although the settlement of New Netherlands was undoubtedly undertaken rather as a commercial speculation, than as an experimental solution of ecclesiastical and civil principles and government, we find that the Dutch were equally anxious and careful to extend and to preserve to their infant settlements the blessings of education and religion. It is true that, in the earlier years of roving and unsystematized traffic which followed the discovery of Manhattan Island, there seems to have been no higher principle involved than that of gain. But as soon as a permanent agricultural and commercial occupation of the country was undertaken by the West India Company, the higher moral and spiritual wants and necessities of its settlers were fully recognized. Emigrants who went forth under their auspices, or those of the States General of Holland, were accompanied by a schoolmaster, being a pious church-member, who was to instruct the children and officiate at religious meetings by leading in the devotions and reading a sermon, until a regular pastor was established over them. Ziekentroosters, or “comforters of the sick,” being persons adapted by their spiritual gifts and graces to edify and comfort the people, were also frequently commissioned as aids to the ministers. Two of these “comforters” accompanied Gov. Minuit in the year 1626, and by them the religious services of the colonists were conducted until early in 1628, when the learned and zealous Jonas Michaelius1 came out from Amsterdam, under the auspices of the North Synod of Hol-

1 N. Y. Col. MSS., ii. 759-70; Brodhead’s N. Y., 1. 188