The Prayer in Consistory before Service

A committee of a certain Classis in the Netherlands, whose task it was to trace the origin and define the meaning of the pre-service prayer, wrote to Dr. Rutgers, complaining that it could find no material on that subject. Dr. Rutgers answered that this was nothing strange since he doubted whether, before the nineteenth century, such a prayer had even been in common usage. (Dr. Rutgers, KerkeMjke Adviezen I. p. 255). He himself could find nothing on it in the earlier centuries. I am not more...