29. Eliminating Confession.--In 1786 the New York Ministerium was organized in Albany, N. Y., by Pastors Kunze, of New York City, H. Moeller, of Albany, and J. S. Schwerdfeger, of Fellstown, and two lay delegates, one from New York, the other from Albany. Eight of the eleven pastors in this district took no part in the organization. Six years elapsed before another meeting convened. The minutes of the first convention state: "In view of the fact that only three pastors and two delegates appeared, those present considered it advisable to look upon themselves only as a committee of the Lutheran Church in the State of New York." The _Lutheran Cyclopaedia_ says: "Though no records prior to the meeting at Albany are extant, Dr. Kunze stated in 1795, and again in 1800, that the New York Ministerium, revived in 1786, had been organized as early as 1773 by F. A. C. Muhlenberg, then pastor in New York." (490.) _Dr. Jacobs:_ "Concerning the fact that any meeting was actually held, we are in ignorance; but Dr. Kunze, who ought to be most competent authority, declares: 'To the late Dr. Henry Muhlenberg belongs the immortal honor of having formed in Pennsylvania a regular ministry, and, what is somewhat remarkable, to one of his sons, who officiated as Lutheran minister from the year 1773 to 1776 in the city of New York, that of having formed the Evangelical Ministry of New York State.' The thought was carried out in 1786." (300.) In a letter to his father, then visiting in Georgia, F. A. C. Muhlenberg mentions a meeting of the Lutheran ministers in the Province of New York, planned for April, 1774. (Graebner, 450.) The Ministerium organized at Albany was a duplicate of the Pennsylvania Ministerium. According to the Minutes a resolution was adopted to regard "the constitution of the Ev. Luth. Church of Pennsylvania as their law." (469.) In 1792 the New York Ministerium adopted the new constitution of the Pennsylvania Synod, which contained no reference to the Lutheran Confessions whatever, merely retaining the name Lutheran. At the convention in Rheinbeck, 1797, Dr. Kunze being the leading spirit and president, the New York Ministerium passed the notorious resolution: "Resolved, That, on account of the intimate relation subsisting between the English Episcopalian and Lutheran Churches, the identity of their doctrine, and the near approach of their church-discipline, this consistory will never acknowledge a newly erected Lutheran church in places where the members may partake of the services of the said English Episcopal Church." (628.) Seven years later this resolution was rescinded, not, indeed, for confessional reasons, but in the interest of expediency and policy, because in 1804 G. Strebeck, with a part of his English congregation in New York, had been received by the Episcopalians. Spaeth remarks with respect to the Rheinbeck resolution: "A fitting parallel to this resolution is found in