ENPages
1
Church in these States in a common ecclesiastical government, constitutes no part of the elements essential to their Church unity. It was no part of that system of doctrine and usage which was necessary to establish their claim as members of the Catholic Church, and the possession or recognition of which was indispensible to their recognition by each other, or by any other parts of the Church, as in Catholic Communion. Their claim to such recognition rests upon higher grounds, (than the constitutional bond) - grounds, it may be, which are embodied, in part, at least, in that bond, but which they occupy, and which they would continue to occupy, as well without as with the existence of that bond. That bond was created in imitation of the action of the several States within which our Dioceses lay, and for purposes of expediency. It was a measure of wisdom and operated well; but it is a novelty in the Church, no case having ever existed before in which Dioceses of the Church of Christ were ever bound together by such a bond; and it was adopted, as all measures of expediency must be, subject to such mutations as a higher expediency or the force of events might make necessary. A separation of one or more of the Dioceses fro the union into which they were brought by their adoption of such a Constitution as that under which we have been acting can in no sense, therefore, be regarded as a breach of the unity of the Church.
{The next few lines of this letter are illegible, and the remainder is wholly lost.}