146 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

having submitted himself to the canons of the church, by becoming one of its members, was thereby precluded from taking the matter before the courts. In this, as in some other trying occasions of his life, when he was brought in conflict with others upon questions of authority and power, he sustained the rights and privileges of his official position with equal firmness, dignity, and force of reasoning. His pen and logic were never to be despised by his opponents. In his controversy with the magistrates of Breuckelen, his arguments prevailed.” During his ministry in Breuckelen, he married at New Amsterdam, on the 9th of July, 1662, his first wife, Machtelt, daughter of Hermann Specht, of the city of Utrecht, “a young lady, if we may trust his own description of her, of rare personal beauty and worth,” whose portrait he has transmitted to us in a birth-day ode, which is said to be “one of the prettiest pictures that conjugal affection has ever drawn.”

After his return to Holland, Selyns remained unsettled for two years; and in 1666, took charge of the congregation of Waverveen, near Utrecht, a rural village of no fame. In 1675, he became a chaplain in the army of the States; but with the exception of this temporary office, he seems to have passed sixteen years of his life in the obscurity of Waverveen, usefully and even contentedly employed; for, in 1670, upon the death of Megapolensis, of New York, he declined a call from that church to become associated with Rev. Mr. Drisius in its charge. The Rev. William Nieuwenhuysen took the place thus declined, and. subsequently, upon the death of both Nieuwenhuysen and Drisius, the call was so urgently renewed to Selyns that he accepted, and again left his native land to spend, as it proved, the remainder of his life in America. He arrived at New York in the summer of 1682, and was received “by the whole congregation with great affection and joy.” Selyns now occupied a position among the churches of the colony which was commensurate with his talents. His congregation possessed not only the advantage of being a metropolitan one, but it was the largest in numbers, and the most powerful in the social and political standing of its members. The times, also, were critical in respect to the ecclesiastical affairs of the Dutch; for, during his absence in Holland, the political and ecclesiastical relations of the province had entirely