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een unnecessary. But, without such a representative, it was hardly possible that the subject, by a single reading of so long a document, could be brought before the minds of all the members of Synod with sufficient clearness.... Therefore it is not strange that some of the important points in the paper should have been entirely overlooked, and also that certain grave misconceptions should have got abroad in the Church concerning the views expressed by us. "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 the
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