Background
He was born in 1636 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was the son of Jan Selijns Hendrickszoon and Janneken de Marees. He came from a good Amsterdam family which gave several ministers to the Church.
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He was born in 1636 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was the son of Jan Selijns Hendrickszoon and Janneken de Marees. He came from a good Amsterdam family which gave several ministers to the Church.
He received a brief, but apparently thorough, training for the ministry at the University of Leyden.
When the Deputati ad Res Indicas of the Amsterdam Classis chose him from among three candidates for the ministry in New Netherland, his knowledge of English, rather uncommon at that time among the Dutch, was one of the qualifications that recommended him. He was ordained February 16, 1660, and reached New Amsterdam on June 11 of that year. He had been promised a salary of 1, 200 guilders, but found on arrival that no funds were available. The congregation at Breuckelen (Brooklyn) could not pay more than 300 guilders' worth in grain, to which Governor Stuyvesant offered to add 250 guilders on condition that Selijns preach every Sunday evening in the chapel on his Bouwerie.
He started services in a barn, but next winter hoped to erect a church. Selijns had signed a contract for four years, and in 1664 he returned to Holland and accepted a call to the parish of Waverveen, in the Province of Utrecht. Twice he refused a call to New Netherland, in 1670 after the death of Johannes Megapolensis and in 1677 after the death of Johannes Theodorus Polhemius; his salary troubles at Breuckelen had made him wary.
In 1681, however, he was prevailed upon to accept a call to New York to fill the vacancy left by the passing of Willem van Nieuwenhuizen. He took the precaution this time of having the conditions drawn up and witnessed before an Amsterdam notary. These guaranteed him a salary of 1, 000 guilders, free rent and fuel, a stipend for the Wednesday evening services, and free passage to America for himself and his family. He landed in New York on August 6, 1682, and started preaching immediately.
The rebellion of Jacob Leisler, who was a deacon in the Dutch Reformed Church, brought him troubles. Since the majority of his elders and deacons were magistrates and as such opposed to the champion of the common people, he took sides against Leisler, thus antagonizing the members of his congregation who saw in Leisler the leader of a just cause. He was a popular preacher, however.
He was on terms of friendship with the English ministers in Boston, and prefixed a long Latin poem to Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana (1702). The Rev. Gualterus Du Bois was called as his colleague in 1700, and Selijns died in September of the following year.
Henricus Selijns was the most cultured of all the Dutch preachers who came to New Netherland in the seventeenth century. Thanks to his persistent efforts, the Dutch Reformed Church, obtained the first church charter granted in the colony. In addition to his pastoral duties, Selyns helped to Governor Stuyvesant. He also was the author of famous poem to Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana,
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He was a tolerant man.
He had been married twice: first, July 9, 1662, to Machtelt Specht of Utrecht, Holland, who died in 1686, and second, January 10, 1694, to Margaretha de Riemer, widow of Cornelis van Steenwijck.
