The company of merchant adventurers was founded in 1407 in England. This was a trading company

merchants who sold all manner of imported goods. They established a guild, secured a royal charter,

and off they went about their business. By the 1570s, the company had its headquarters in Antwerp

in Belgium. And there in Antwerp, in the 1570s, this company became a haven for Puritans.

This is during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. She was bent on bringing conformity to the church

through her acts of uniformity. So this is the time of the Puritans, those theological and ecclesiastical

non-conformists, those who were bent on bringing purity to the church and to her worship.

Among them was Thomas Cartwright, a Cambridge professor who was not only a Puritan, he was

a Presbyterian, and he lost his post at Cambridge because of his writings and because of his views.

He was exiled first to Geneva, and there he taught alongside Theodore Beza at Calvin's Academy,

established there in Geneva. He returned briefly to London but was exiled again, and this time he

went to Antwerp in Belgium, and there he pastored a congregation of members who were of the company

of merchant adventurers. In 1582, the company moved its headquarters from Antwerp to Middelberg,

the capital of the Dutch province of Zealand tucked up near the North Sea. And in 1586,

using primarily the liturgy of John Knox that Knox had given to the Church of Scotland,

Cartwright drew up the Middelberg liturgy. So we have this wonderful text from the time of the

Reformation, named for the city in the Netherlands, the Middelberg liturgy. As you read through it,

you find that it gives instructions for the preaching of the Word. In fact, the minister is to

read entire chapters of the Bible, one chapter at a time, one chapter after another. At the minister's

discretion, he can have the singing of Psalms in between these readings of the chapter,

and then there are the sermons on the chapter as the minister goes through. There is an instruction

that over time the minister is to lead the congregation chapter by chapter through the entire

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