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Under this construction of the law every religion was in fact tolerated. The Lutherans in Holland sent a clergyman, Ernestus Goetwater, to New Amsterdam, to organize a church. The Directors wrote, "It is our intention to permit every one to have freedom within his own dwelling, to serve God in such manner as his religion requires, but without authorizing any public meetings or conventicles."
This tolerance, so imperfect in the light of the nineteenth century, was very noble in the dark days of the seventeenth. Upon the arrival of Goetwater at New Amsterdam, the clergy of the Reformed church remonstrated against his being permitted to preach.
The governor, adhering to his policy of bigotry, forbade him to hold any meeting, or to do any clerical service, but to regulate his conduct according to the placards of the province against private conventicles. Soon after this the governor ordered him to leave the colony and to return to Holland. This harsh decree was however suspended out of regard to the feeble health of Goetwater.
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. So great and persistent, however, was the fury of the fanatics that he was finally compelled to yield and return to Holland, in 1659.
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