American Lutheranism, page 29 by Friedrich Bente
<< Return to Title Details & Download30
ant at such services. (317.) A number of Lutherans were cast into prison. Realizing that such harsh measures would prove hurtful to their business interests, the authorities in Holland, in an order dated June 14, 1656, rebuked Stuyvesant for his high-handed procedure, saying: "We should have gladly seen that your Honor had not posted up the transmitted edict against the Lutherans, and had not punished them by imprisonment, . . . inasmuch as it has always been our intention to treat them with all peaceableness and quietness. Wherefore, your Honor shall not cause any more such or similar edicts to be published without our previous knowledge, but suffer the matter to pass in silence, and permit them their free worship in their houses." (314.)
18. Johannes Ernestus Gutwasser.--Evidently, to the Lutherans the time seemed favorable to renew their urgent requests for a pastor of their own. And in July, 1657, Johannes Ernestus Gutwasser (not Goetwater, or Gutwater, or Goetwasser), a German, sent by the Lutheran Consistory of Amsterdam, arrived on Manhattan Island. Great was the fury of the Reformed domines and vehement their clamor for his immediate return. They wrote a letter to the classis in Amsterdam in which, according to Cobb, "they relate that 'a Lutheran preacher, Goetwater, arrived to the great joy of the Lutherans and the especial discontent and disappointment of the congregation of this place, yea, of the whole land, even the English. We went to the Director-General,' who summoned Goetwater, and found that he had as credentials only a letter from a Lutheran consistory in Europe to the Lutheran Church in New Amsterdam. The governor ordered him not to preach, even in a private house. The domines lament, 'We already have the snake in our bosom,' and urge Stuyvesant to open the consistory's letter, which, oddly enough, he refused to do, but consented to the ministers' demand that Goetwater be sent back in the ship that brought him. [']Now this Lutheran parson,' the Dutch ministers conclude, 'is a man of a g