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The Puritan and Presbyterian Versions of the Netherlands Liturgy

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The Puritan and Presbyterian Versions of the Netherlands Liturgy THE PURITAN AND PRESBYTERIAN VERSIONS OF THE NETHERLANDS LITURGY DANIELJAMES MEETER Wainfleet,Ontario English Puritanism was defined in great part by its non-conformity to the Book of Common Prayer. But not all Puritans altogether rejected the discipline of written liturgies'. Some Puritans (and a few Scottish Presbyterians) had an established liturgy to contend with that was much more congenial to their Calvinism, the Netherlands Liturgy of the Dutch Reformed Church. These were the "Dutch Puritans," as the historian Keith Sprunger has labelled them, the exiles, expatriates, and merchants who set up English-speaking congregations in the Netherlands2. The Dutch Puritans of a conservative "presbyterian" bent were content to conform to the Netherlands Liturgy, publishing an English translation of it, the "Leyden Lyturgy," sometime around 16403. But others, to the consternation of the Dutch Reformed Church, refused the use of even this Calvinistic form of worship. In this article I will examine the varieties of Puritan contact with the Netherlands Liturgy during the early 1600's. I will begin by reviewing the Dutch Reformed Church's approach to liturgical conformity, as 1 See Horton Davies, TheWorship of theEnglish Puritans (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1948); see Bryan Spinks, Fromthe Lordand "The BestReformed Churches ":A Studyof theEucharistic Liturgyin the EnglishPuritan and SeparatistTraditions 1550-1633. Bibliotheca Ephemerides Liturgicae,"Subsidia," no. 33 (Rome: Centro LiturgicoVincenziano, Edizione Liturgiche, 1984);and see Bard Thompson, Liturgiesof theWestern Church, paperback reprint (NewYork: New American Library, 1974), pp. 310-41. 2 Keith Sprunger, DutchPuritanism: A Historyof Englishand Scottish Churches of theNetherlands in theSixteenth and SeventeenthCenturies, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, vol. 31 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982).Although these congregationshave had an outsized influenceon the developmentof Protestantism,only recentlyhas Sprunger providedus with a coherent scholarlypicture of them.The term "Dutch Puritan" is a little misleading;they were among the Dutch but did not become Dutch. 3 A Partof theLyturgy of theReformed churches in theNetherlands (Leyden), 40 pages. No author, translator, publisher, or date is given, but the copy at the Union TheologicalSeminary in New York has "1640" handwrittenon the title page. The document is listed as item 16560.5 in the secondedition of thePollard and RedgraveShort- TitleCatalogue, which dates it at 1640. The National Union Catalogue number is NSN0006102.The title is accurate-"A Part of the Lyturgy"-since large parts of the NetherlandsLiturgy have been left out: the Christian Prayers, the Creeds, and the Consolationof the Sick. 53 exemplified by its acceptance of the Walloon Liturgy for its many French- speaking congregations. I will then survey the various liturgical usages of the Dutch Puritans and the Dutch Reformed Church's attempts to discipline them. I will engage some recent scholarship in order to deter- mine when the Netherlands Liturgy first appeared in English. Finally, I will survey the translations of the Netherlands Liturgy which appeared in London and in British New York. The Netherlands Liturgy began in 1566 as Petrus Dathenus' significantly altered Dutch translation of the Palatinate Kirchenordnung, a broadly Calvinistic church order with both Zwinglian and Lutheran influ- ences. Dathenus' Liturgy quickly received the approval of the formative assemblies of the Dutch Reformed Church, and the early synods adapted and expanded the Liturgy better to satisfy the Church's requirements. The 1619 National Synod of Dordrecht (` `Dort") established the final and standard form of the Netherlands Liturgy which, apart from textual cor- ruptions, would remain unchanged for another three centuries. It came to be used wherever Dutch colonies were established throughout the world, in Ceylon, Indonesia, South Africa, and South and North America. La Liturgie Wallonne The original sixteenth century Netherlands was a bilingual country, the more northerly inhabitants speaking Dutch, and the Walloons of the south speaking French. This bilingualism was reflected in the Reformed Church from the start. For example, both the Convent of Wezel (1568) and the Synod of Emden (1571) recognized the right of the Walloons not only to use the French language, but also to use the Genevan Psalter and Catechism of the Reformed Church in France4. In 1578, at Dordrecht, the second "National Synod of the Netherlandic Dutch and Walloon Churches," as it called itself, set up two parallel church-structures, Dutch and French, including consistories, classes, and particular (provincial) synods, all under one common general (national) synod5. 4 F. L. Rutgers, ed. Actavan de Nederlandsche Synoden der ZestiendeEeuw, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht: UitgeverijJ. P. van den Tol, 1980), pp. 20, 56-58, 247. "En 1571le Synode d'Emden ... `décident quant au formulaire du catéchisme, de suivre celuy de Genève aux Eglisesde langue française.' Le catéchismeet la liturgie se trouvant toujours ensemble, c'est à cette date que nous pouvonsfaire remonter l'adoption-sans décisionexpresse, il est vrai-de la liturgie de Genève par l'ensembledes Egliseswallonnes .... On ne trouve pas non plus dans les synodes des Eglisesde France de décisionexpresse pour l'adoption de la liturgie." E. Lacheret, La LiturgieWallonne: Étude Historique et Prátiquesuivie Des TextsAnciens et d'un Projet de Révision(The Hague, 1890), pp. 2-3. 5 Rutgers, Acta, pp. 234, 245-46. .
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