But happily this church had a better resource than royal governors in the well-equipped and sustained, and generally well-chosen, army of missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

Not fewer than fifty-eight of them were placed by the society in this single province.

And if among them there were those who seemed to "preach Christ of envy and strife," as if the great aim of the preacher of the gospel were to get a man out of one Christian sect into another, there were others who showed a more Pauline and more Christian conception of their work, taking their full share of the task of bringing the knowledge of Christ to the unevangelized, whether white, red, or black.[80:2] The diversity of organization which was destined to characterize the church in the province of New York was increased by the inflow of population from New England.

The settlement of Long Island was from the beginning Puritan English.

The Hudson Valley began early to be occupied by New Englanders bringing with them their pastors.