and none at Saardam because of “the chief of the Menists being over at Amsterdam.” These meetings were attended almost exclusively by Mennonites, and they entertained him at their houses. One of their preachers he describes as “convinced of truth,” and of another he says that after a discourse of several hours about religion they “had no difference.” Jacob Nordyke, of Harlingen, a “Menist and friendly man,” accompanied the party on their journey, and when the wagon broke down near Oudeboone he went ahead on foot to prepare a meeting. The climax of this staid good fellowship was capped, however, at Grow. Says Story in his journal: “Hemine Gosses, their preacher, came to us, and taking me by the hand he embraced me and saluted me with several kisses, which I readily answered, for he expressed much satisfaction before the people, and received us gladly, inviting us to take a dish of tea with him. He showed us his garden, and gave us of his grapes of several kinds, but first of all a dram lest we should take cold after the exercise of the meeting,” and “treated us as if he had been a Friend, from which he is not far, having been as tender as any at the meeting.”
William Sewel, the historian, was a Mennonite, and it certainly was no accident that the first two Quaker histories were written in Holland.[1] It was among the Mennonites they made their converts.[2] In fact transition between the two sects both ways was easy. Quakers became members of the Mennonite church at Crefeld[3] and at Haarlem,[4] and in the reply which Peter Henrichs and Jacob Claus of Amsterdam made in 1679 to a pamphlet by Heinrich Kassel, a Mennonite preacher at
