"Upon reading a letter from New York signed by Henry Heiser, Lucas Van Buskirk and L. Hartman, representing that they have erected an English Lutheran Church, on account of the inability of their children to understand the German language: RESOLVED, That it is never the practice in an Evangelical Consistory to sanction any kind of schism; that if the persons who signed the letter wish to continue their children in the Lutheran Church connection in New York, they earnestly recommend them the use of the German School, and in case there is no probability of any success in this particular, they herewith declare that they do not look upon persons who are not yet communicants of a Lutheran Church as apostates in case they join an English Episcopal Church. RESOLVED, 2d, That on account of an intimate connection subsisting between the English Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church and the identity of their doctrine and near alliance of their Church discipline, this Consistory will never acknowledge a new erected Lutheran Church merely English, in places where the members may partake of the Services of the said Episcopal Church." From the viewpoint of the ministers in 1797, Lutheranism seems to have been a matter of language rather than of religion. It was something to be retained among German-speaking people, but could not be effectively transmitted except through the medium of the German language. We have come to the last decade of the 18th century. In the political world great men were finding themselves and mighty principles were finding expression in the organization of what was destined to become one of the great states of the world. Some of our own men were taking a large part in the making of American history. In the church they were content with a more restricted outlook. Our people, it is true, were of humble origin, yet some of them had attained wealth and social standing. The Van Buskirks, the Grims, the Beekmans, the Wilmerdings and the Lorillards were men of affairs and influence in the growing town of 30,000 that had begun to extend northward as far as Canal Street and even beyond. But we look in vain for any positive contribution to the life of the embryo metropolis of the world. Our church had lost its roots. The Rhinebeck Resolution indicates the feeble appreciation of the distinctive confession to which she owed her existence. The English hymn books and liturgies of this period are equally destitute of any positive confessional character.