84 DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON
their own way; and to say that their own way of
worship was as dear to them as their beliefs is not
strikingly to differentiate them from the rest of
mankind. They brought with them from the home
country a tenacious reverence for their fathers'
method of worship and for the Calvinistic polity
of the Dutch Reformed Church. They looked
with awe upon the synod,, the final tribunal in
Holland for ecclesiastical disputes. They regarded
with respect the classis, composed of ministers and
elders in a certain district; but their hearts went
out in a special affection to the consistory, which
was made up of the ministers and elders of the
single local kerk. This at least they could repro-
duce in the crude conditions under which they
labored, and it seemed a link with the home which
they had left so far behind them.
They had no intention, however, of forcing this
church discipline on those who could not con-
scientiously accept it. The devout wish of William
the Silent that all his countrymen might dwell to-
gether in amity regardless of religious differences
was fulfilled among the early settlers in New
Netherland. Their reputation for tolerance was
spread abroad early in the history of the col-
ony, and Huguenots, Lutherans, Presbyterians,