[several lines lost] the manifold favors, [ ], and benefactions, with which the only good and merciful God favors this budding state and its inhabitants from time to time, of which among so many, if not, countless others, the least of which are not the continuation of healthy, fruitful, and peaceful times, the remarkable growth and flourishing of population and commerce, the fruitful and blessed harvest of the past year, being contrary to assumption, indeed, to the amazement of everyone, who observed such and noted that on many of the farms and plantations abandoned because of the unexpected massacre by the barbaren, and consequently neither plowed nor sown, but only from shoots, there grew so much grain as if the same had been plowed and sown; to which is then added the continuous healthfulness, while, nevertheless, other places and nations, better and more worthy than we, indeed, even our friends and religious compatriots in our fatherland, have been visited by severe and pestilential fevers, and which still above everything else, indeed, the highest [several lines lost] blessings and benefactions [ ] ought to oblige for [ ] but also for true [ ] repentance, which then, in order to receive in the [ ] place together with the only good God [ ] in the second place from him as from the [ ] of all temporal and spiritual things, the director general and councilors of New Netherland have deemed it most urgent to order and proclaim a general day of thanksgiving and prayer, which shall be held on the first Wednesday in the month of March, being the seventh of the same month; therefore, our subjects are commanded to find themselves on the aforesaid day in the church, or there where usually God’s word is preached, before and after noon, in order to praise the only good God after listening to the same and to give thanks for the favors, blessings, and benefactions, with which His Divine Majesty has been pleased to favor us last year, indeed, the entire time of our lives, and further [ ] His Holy Name with humble [several lines lost] for His Holy Name [ ] for the further propagation and spreading of His Holy Word for the well-being and salvation of all of us; for which, on the aforesaid day of thanksgiving and prayer, so that everything may be better observed and performed with more harmony, the director general and councilors forbid, during God’s service, all playing and practicing of caatsen, balslaen, hunting, fishing, sailing, plowing, sowing, mowing, together with all unlawful games, such as dice playing, binge drinking, and the like, upon pain of arbitrary penalty and punishment previously codified for it, just as we then also do encourage and beseech all of our servants of God’s Holy Word within our government to shape their sermons and prayers to this aforesaid purpose. Thus done at our session held in Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, the 6th of February anno 1657.
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Pieter Tonnemans
