The distance of this from the Mother Country, and the consequent separation of the members of the Church from their parent stock, which rendered them dependent for the ministry upon emigrations from England, or obliged them to send candidates to that Country, for Holy Orders, operated as a serious obstacle to the increase of the Church here. All the clergy of this Country were attached to the diocese of the Bishop of London, who thus became the only bond of union between them; but his authority could not be effectually exerted, at such a distance, in those cases where it was most needed; and, for these and other reasons, several efforts were made by the clergy to obtain an American Episcopate. But the jealousy with which such a measure was regarded by other denominations, and the great opposition with which it consequently met, prevented the accomplishment of the design. When, however, the tie, which had thus bound the members of the Church together in one communion, had been severed, by the independence of the United States, it was necessary that some new bond of union should be adopted; and renewed efforts were made to procure an Episcopate. The clergy of the Church in Connecticut, at a meeting held in March, 1783, elected the Rev. Samuel Seabury, D. D., their Bishop, and sent him to England, with an application to the Archbishop of Canterbury for his consecration to that holy office. The English Bishops were unable to consecrate him, till an Act of Parliament, authorizing them so to do, could be passed; and he then made application to the Bishops of the Church in Scotland, who readily assented to the request, and he was consecrated by them, in Aberdeen, on the 14th of November, 1784. The Prelates, who were thus the instruments of first communicating the Episcopate to this Country, were, the Right Reverend Robert Kilgour, D. D., Bishop of Aberdeen, the Right Reverend Arthur Petrie, D. D., Bishop of Ross and Moray, and the Right Reverend John Skinner, D. D., Coadjutor Bishop of Aberdeen. Bishop Seabury returned to this Country, immediately after his consecration, and commenced his Episcopal duties without delay. A few clergymen of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, having held a meeting at Brunswick, N. J., on the 13th and 14th of May, 1784, for the purpose of consulting in what way to renew a Society for the support of widows and children of deceased clergymen, determined to procure a larger meeting on the 5th of the ensuing October, not only for the purpose of completing the object for which they had then assembled, but also to confer and agree on some general principles of a union of the Church throughout the States. At this latter meeting, a plan of ecclesiastical union was agreed upon, with great unanimity; and a recommendation to the several States, to send delegates to a general meeting, at Philadelphia, in September, 1785, was adopted.