ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 5 



pend on buying it at Ratnapoora from the searchers for pre- 

 cious stones ! 



An account of the Dutch' Church in Ceylon, collected from the 

 Local Records, deposited in the Wolfendahl Church, 

 Colombo. By the Rev. J. D. Palm. 

 (Read May 22nd, and July 1847.) 



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 pa- 

 per do not date earlier than 1659, twenty years after the Dutch 

 settlement. During that interval Ecclesiastical matters ap- 

 pear to have assumed a sufficiently organized form. At Jaffna, 

 Colombo, and Galle, a Consistory was established, Dutch schools 

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

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

 religious instruction, by means of interpretation, to adult Sin- 

 ghalese 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 

 Military 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 exten- 

 sion of his name and kingdom among benighted nations. 



The collection of letters from the year 1660 to 1777 is 



