truths maintained through blood and flame?” If the doctrine be true, the Church in Holland had no right to relinquish its authority over the Church in America.  If this doctrine be a “principle” of our Church, never, never could your Missionaries consent to be instrumental in bringing the Church in China, which now has liberty in Christ Jesus, into such perpetual bondage.  Once bring the Chinese churches under the authority of the Church in America, and it matters not how great may be their growth, and how many centuries may pass away, the Church in America can never relinquish her authority over them!  But this is not an “admitted principle” of our Church.  The Dutch Church is protestant, not papal.  Instead of the principle being one of the “old truths maintained through blood and flame” by her, it is an old error of the Papacy, for rejecting which she poured out her blood so freely, and would do the same to-day.  Yet in the Report of the Committee this error of Romanism, guilty of the blood of thousands upon thousands of the saints of the Most High, is made to lie at the basis of the action of the last Synod!

The Committee next proceed to the statement of “certain historic facts.”  As with the “admitted principles,” so with the “historic facts.”  With some of them we have no dispute.  But when they come to describe the present condition and relations of the churches at Amoy, their language, to say the least, is very unfortunate.  “These six Churches,” say they, “have grown up together under such an interchange and community of labor on the part of our own Missionaries, and on the part of those belonging to the English Presbyterian Church, that all are said to have a two-fold ecclesiastical relation—­one with England—­one with America, and still a third, and economical and domestic relation among themselves, which is covered and controlled by what is styled ’The Great Presbyterial or Classical Council of Amoy.’”

We do not know by whom these native Churches “are said” to have a two-fold or three-fold ecclesiastical relation.  It is not so said by the Missionaries.  They contend that the native churches are neither English, nor American, but Chinese churches.  They are ecclesiastically related to each other, and ought to remain so.  But the effort is now made to sever this ecclesiastical relation to each other, and bring half of them into ecclesiastical relationship with the Church in America, making them the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church of North America, in China!  At present the native churches have an intimate, but not an ecclesiastical, relation to both the Church in England and America.

From the above mistaken statement the Committee have drawn out three “particulars” which they seem to think especially worthy of note.

“1st.  That while this Chinese Presbyterial or Classical Council is itself an autonomy—­having the right to ordain ministers, exercise discipline, and do whatever else a ‘self-regulating Classis’ or Presbytery can or may do, still the whole in England is claimed to be the Presbytery of Amoy, and to this Synod it is reported as the Classis of Amoy.”