Excerpt from A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy and Laity of His Diocese

Creed, the article on the descent into hell, which the Reviewers Of the Prayer Book had left out and further, till a solemn assurance was given to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that, in omitting the Atha nasian Creed, and in the other omissions in our Liturgy, no essential departure was designed from the doctrine, discipline, and worship Of the English Church. Hence, the Athanasian creed is virtually as binding upon the American Church as 'i1pon the English; so that any member of that Church who should deny the truth 'of that creed, or any article of it, would, thereby, become a heretic. On this same principle, viz}: that the judgment of the One Catholic and Apostolic Church, in regard to faith, and order, and sacraments, is the ultimate Standard for all Christians, it _is, that whatever, in the way of doctrine, is set forth by any national Church for the protection or illustration of truth, must be held subservient to such judgment, and be understood in consistency with it.* There is no middle way between this and the merest private judgment, or the doing that which is right in one's own eyes, a thing directly forbidden by Almighty God.

From this, it must be manifest to all, that a dio cese does not determine its own faith, but comes nu der the necessity, by becoming a diocese, to believe and do certain things already determined for it by Almighty God, _as authoritatively set forth by the Universal Church, and conveyed to it by the national Church, and that it has no power to alter, to modify.

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