CEYLON BRANCH — ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. § 



AN ACCOUNT OF THE DUTCH CHURCH IN CEYLON, 



COLLECTED FROM THE LOCAL RECORDS, DEPOSITED IN THE 

 WOLF END AHL CHURCH, COLOMBO,, 



By the Rev. J. D. Palm. 



(Read May 22d and July 1847.J 



PART II. 



I wish it were in my power to trace the History of the 

 Dutch Church in Ceylon from its commencement. But the local 

 records which have supplied the information in this paper do not 

 date earlier than 1659, twenty years after the Dutch settle- 

 ment. During that interval Ecclesiastical matters appear to 

 have assumed a sufficiently organized form. At Jaffna, Co- 

 lombo and Galle a Consistory was established, Dutch schools 

 were in operation, and ministers were located, who not only at- 

 tended to the fixed congregation in the town, but also gave 

 religious instruction by means of interpretation to adult Singha- 

 lese and Malabars, at the native village schools. It appears 

 from the correspondence preserved among the records that one 

 or more ministers and krankbezoekers always accompanied the 

 Dutch fleet in their expeditions, and that as soon as a place 

 was conquered a minister was stationed to preach to the Mi- 

 litary and the Company's servants of the settlement, but no 

 less to endeavour, in obedience to certain official instructions to 

 the clergy, to propagate Christianity among the aborigines, in 

 order, as one of the classes expresses it, that God may make 

 instrumental the conquests of Netherlands' arms to the extension 

 of his name and kingdom among benighted nations. 



The collection of letters from the year 1660 to 1777 is 

 very large, consisting of local correspondence between the Churches 

 of Colombo, Galle, Trincomalie, Jaffna and Manaar, letters from 

 and to Batavia, Malacca, Negapatam and Cochin, and the an- 



