“So far as we can judge from the report of the proceedings of Synod, as given in The Christian Intelligencer, one of the most important considerations—­perhaps altogether the most important mentioned—­why the Church, gathered by us here, should not be an integral part of the Church in America, was entirely overlooked.  That consideration relates to the unity of Christ’s Church.  Our Saviour prays:  ’Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are one.’  ’That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us:  that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.  And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one.’  Will our Church require of us, will she desire that those here who are altogether one—­one in doctrine, one in their views of Church order, and one in mutual love—­be violently separated into two Denominations?  We cannot believe it.  Suppose the case of two Churches originally distinct.  By coming into close contact, and becoming better acquainted with each other, they find that they hold to the same doctrinal standards, and they explain them in the same manner; they have the same form of Church government, and their officers are chosen, and set apart in the same way; they have the same order of worship, and of administering the sacraments; all their customs, civil, social, and religious, are precisely alike, and they love each other dearly; should not such churches unite and form but one Denomination?  Yet, such a supposition does not, and cannot, even after you allow all the likeness and unity between the two churches it is possible to conceive of, represent the circumstances of the churches gathered by us, and by our Scotch brethren of the English Presbyterian Church.  Our [theirs and ours] Churches originally were one, and still are one; and the question is not whether those churches shall be united, but, shall they be separated?  Possibly (not probably) the question will be asked, why were these churches allowed originally to become one?  We answer, God made them so, and that without any plan or forethought on our part, and now we thank him for his blessing that he has made them one, and that he has blessed them because they are one.

“That misconceptions have got abroad in our Church concerning our views, we have abundant evidence from various private letters.  They were written with the most kindly feelings towards us, but evidently under the impression that we find difficulty in organizing our churches according to the order of the Dutch Church.  We have never found any difficulty of this kind.  It is true that when we were called to the solemn duty of commencing a church organization in an empire containing one-third of the inhabitants of the globe, we gave the subject of church polity a more careful investigation than we had ever before