over any other member. No clergyman is
to be admitted into the society. Religious services are to
be as simple as possible. Every Sunday and holiday the
people are to assemble, sing a Psalm and listen to a chapter
from the Bible, to be read by one of the members in
rotation. After this another Psalm is to be sung. At the end
of these exercises the court shall be opened for public
business. The object of the association being to establish a
harmonious society of persons of different religious
sentiments, all intractable people shall be excluded from
it, such as those in communion with the Roman See usurious
Jews, English stiff-necked Quakers, Puritans, fool-hardy
believers in the Millenium and obstinate modern pretenders
to revelation."

While the Company in Holland, were inviting emigrants to their
territory of the New World, with the fullest promises of religious
toleration, their governor, Stuyvesant, was unrelentingly persecuting
all who did not sustain the established religion.

A very quiet, thoughtful, inoffensive man, John Brown, an Englishman,
moved from Boston to Flushing. He was a plain farmer, very retiring in
his habits and a man of but few words. From curiosity he attended a
Quaker meeting. His meditative spirit was peculiarly impressed with
the simplicity of their worship. He invited them to his house, and
soon joined their society. The magistrates informed Stuyvesant that
John Brown's house had become a conventicle for Quakers. Being
arrested, he did not deny the charge, and was fined twenty-five pounds
and threatened with banishment.

The next week a new proclamation was issued, saying,

"The public exercise of any religion but the Reformed, in
houses, barns, ships, woods or fields, will be punished by a
fine of fifty guilders; double for the second offence; and
for the third quadruple with arbitrary correction."

John Brown, either unable or refusing to pay his fine, was taken to
New Amsterdam, where he was imprisoned for three months. An order was
then issued announcing his banishment.

"For the welfare," it was written,

"of the community, and to crush as far as possible, that
abominable sect who treat with contempt both the political
magistrate, and the ministers of God's holy word, and who
endeavor to undermine the police and religion, John Brown is
to be transported from this prov