bishop, toward whom, even yet, he finds it expedient to use the language of fraternity rather than of command. The council of Chalcedon,' which had been obliged to Leo for the luminous exposition of the points at issue between Eutyches and Nestorius, and which had declared, and this time sincerely, that "Peter had spoken through Leo," calmly proceeded to arrange precedence between Rome and Constantinople in utter neglectfulness of everything except the civil rank of the two cities. The council is not contemptuous of the Roman claims to a divine superiority. It is profoundly oblivious of them. Once the whole East was for thirty-five years out of communion with Rome, yet treated this fact as a mere incident of more important controversies. And at the second œcumenical council, that of Constantinople, in 381, the bishops called Meletius of Antioch to the INDIFFER- TIONS. presidency, entirely neglecting the fact that he was under the ban of Rome. Indeed, Chrysostom, until he was fifty-one years old, had never been in communion with Rome a day in his life. Yet this did not in the least stand in the way of his being made archbishop of Constantinople. When invested in this great see he at length arranged terms of accommodation with Rome, not by an act of submission, but of mutual oblivion. LATENT AN TWEEN EAST The transference of the seat of sole sovereignty to the East, after its extinction in Rome, adding political to the intellectual superiority of the Greeks, affected the Latins with a mixture of embarrassment and disgust. At last they determined on self-help. In crowning Charles the Great, the mighty Frank, with the Roman diadem, they took a final leave of the East. True, TAGONISM BE- the bonds of religious communion were ostensibly acknowledged for two hundred and fifty years longer. Yet they were rapidly losing force, so that the final breach of 1054 did little more than confirm outwardly a schism already inwardly consummated. Thenceforward the Roman pope was to the Greeks a foreign phenomenon. His rapidly mounting greatness in the West astounded and sometimes dismayed the Easterns. Rome, while terming Constantinople schismatical, has never called her heretical. Inconsiderate Latin writers may have done so sometimes, but not the apostolic see. Never, we believe, has a Greek been sent to the stake in the West on a charge of unsound doctrine.* 'The fourth council here simply extended action already taken by the second. 2 Even the rejection of the immaculate conception and of papal infallibility has not provoked Rome into calling the Greeks heretics. From soon after 622 the crushing ravages of Mohammedanism were almost the death of the Eastern Church. Myriads of its members were massacred; myriads were lured or compelled into Islam; the flower of its youth was swept into the armies or the harems of the conquerors, and trained to abhor the faith of its fathers, while the merciless exactions of the Moslem masters, especially after the utterly barbarous Turks had succeeded to the much less tyrannical Arabs, reduced the Oriental Christians to such utter poverty, that it was all they could do to maintain, in a wretched way, their churches, priests, and bishops, and the mere elementary schools. The long stagnation of the Greek mind is sufficiently explained by the abject ignorance into which the Greeks were forced. Ignorance and immorality went together. The patriarchs, compelled by the Turks to pay enor- AN OPPRESmous bribes for their places, and for restoration after the frequent depositions, oppressed the metropolitans, these the bishops, these the priests, and these the people. The pastors were accused of even encouraging wickedness in their people in order to find bread for themselves and their wives and children by the money paid for the mitigation of penances. This representation comes from a highly unfriendly source,' yet we can see it to have had a considerable foundation in fact. MOHAMMED SIONS. CONVERSION The Oriental Church, before 500, had practically lost Egypt, and perhaps the greater part of Syria, while the Armenian nation had permanently withdrawn from its communion. It could reckon on little except Asia Minor, the Islands, Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and Mosia. Then came the teeming Saracen, and next the far more fearful Turkish hordes. Under this unspeakable oppression, it seemed likely to collapse altogether. Little might have been left but helpless and disjointed fragments, glad to hide themselves under the wing of OF RUSSIA. the great Roman patriarch, but for the mighty event of the conversion of Russia, which closed the first Christian millennium. The almost despairing prayer of Christian Constantinople, "Let there arise from our bones some avenger,' 992 was thus more than answered. She herself has been kept alive, and religiously independent, and has had a growing barbarian strength at her disposal, which has been steadily advancing toward her deliverance from the Moslem, and even protected her against the murderous ravages which recently laid Armenia waste. In Russia a destiny 'Pichler, Protestantismus in der orientalischen Kirche, pp. 28, 29. 'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor. of unknown prospects and expanding greatness awaits the Oriental Church. In a picturesque exaggeration, the time may yet come when Russian and Greek writers, in their turn, may speak with sarcastic disparagement of the popes as "the leaders of the great Italian schism." ADVANCING The great mass of the Slavonic race, the Russian, is still essentially barbarous. What it will be, religiously, when thoroughly civilized, does not yet appear. Yet even now religion has a far more effective sway over its emotions than usually among the Greeks, and as its development proceeds, there is no reason to doubt that it will come to have a powerful control over conduct. The Slavonians may not have so fine a fibre as the Greeks, but they seem to have a much deeper nature. Christianity is quite as effective a principle in Russia as in America.1 Not much attention should be given to the occasional illusory successes of Rome, in persuading the Greek emperors and patriarchs, when peculiarly hard pressed by the Mohammedans, into a futile submission. The two principal were the Union of Lyons, in 1274, and especially that of Florence, in 1439, only fourteen years before the fall of Constantinople. In every case the union ROMAN was rejected by the priests and people almost before the ink of its documents was dry. Yet by opportunity of the Crusades, and free outlays of money among impoverished Easterns, by large concessions as to rite, discipline, administration, and even as to doctrine, and by the growing influence of the Western Powers, Rome has secured from among Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and Copts, a following of many millions, perhaps more than one seventh of Oriental Christianity. These, being in constant communication with Western life, are said to stand much higher in intelligence and character than the rest. The rapidly advancing power and pride of Russia, however, seem likely to set a term to these encroachments, or even to cause a retrocession. Leo XIII, following Benedict XIV, has shown his good sense by assuring his Oriental brethren that he does not mean to interfere with their patriarchal rights, or with their ritual or disciplinary peculiarities. Very possibly a better understanding may some day ensue. Yet Latinism ought by this time to have learned that it never can conquer the Eastern Church. 'Such movements as the Stundist, having served to vitalize the Russian Church, may eventually be reabsorbed into it. 'See above, vol. i, pp. 543, 544. CHAPTER XV. RELATION OF THE GREEK CHURCH TO PROTESTANTISM. TATE ALLI WHEN Western Christendom found itself suddenly cleft into two warring halves, it was natural that the Reformers, who had bought their freedom by a breach with the immemorial traditions of doctrine, ritual, and polity, should consider the possibility of making these losses good by alliance with the Eastern Church. The orthodoxy of this was so indisputable that Orthodox had become a part of its very title; its succession was more certainly authentic than that of Rome; and every one of the undisputed councils of the whole Church had been held in its THE REFORMterritory. To the hierarchical arrogance of Rome it ERS MEDIopposed a calm assurance of doctrinal and ritual ANCE WITH superiority. Could the Reforming North and the Orthodox East join their forces, Rome would sink into relative insignificance. The scheme, however, was an impossibility from the beginning. However much the Eastern patriarchs and their dependent bishops might resent the pretensions of Rome, they recognized themselves as belonging to the same great system. The continental Reformers, on the other hand, had broken altogether, not with Romanism merely, but with the Catholic Church. With the martyrs and the early fathers they had the fellowship of a common Christianity, but not of common Catholicism. THE EAST. The two variant Christian systems agreed as to God, the Trinity, creation, providence, the fact if not the full nature of the fall, Christ, redemption, heaven, and hell. They agreed that without purity and righteousness no one can see God. They allowed that the word and sacraments are the principal channels of justification and sanctification, and that faith working by love infallibly justifies. But in almost all the specifications and proportions of these common principles concerning justification they differed irreconcilably. And at almost every point Greece sided with Rome and antagonized the Reformers. To the Catholic conception of the Gospel as a new law the Protestants opposed the Gospel as the free spiritual principle of a new life. Paul, in Catholicism, was little more than an august name; the Reformation first restored him to a vigorous and effective life. POINTS OF To Catholicism the sacraments were the chief channels of sanctification; to Protestantism, the word. In the old system Bible reading had become a carefully guarded luxury; in the new it was a daily necessity. Catholicism made the sacraments seven; Protestantism retrenched them to two. The former made them the channels of grace ex opere operato; the latter only ex opere operantis. The former made the Lord's Supper a propitiatory; the lat ter would not even acknowledge it to be a eucharistic sacrifice. Except for baptism and matrimony, Catholicism made the validity of the sacraments to depend absolutely on the ministry of a priest of apostolic succession; Protestantism declared this at most only important for regularity. Catholicism made the episcopate essential, and alone competent to confer the priesthood; continental Protestantism either abandoned the succession, or declared it of only historical worth. And lastly, while Catholicism, though allowing justification to be the free gift of God, maintained it to be capable of increase by works done in a state of grace, Protestantism denied this. Protestantism universally rejected masses for the dead, denying the propitiatory character of the eucharist, but only Calvinism seems to have formally condemned prayers for the dead, which, however, Lutheranism has abandoned almost altogether. CONSTANTI- Not in one of these points did Constantinople agree with Wittenberg and Geneva. In every one she sided with Rome. Heartily as she disliked the great Western patriarchate, she was sensible that here it was fighting her own battles. Her system of doctrine, not so far developed as the Roman, or so sharply defined, differed in nothing vital. Perhaps she came nearest to the Protestants as to the value of the vernacular Scriptures, yet she too has always had great misgivings about making the Bible too free to the laity. Rome tolerates criticisms on the presentation of doctrine, if not affecting the substance. And as to her own great doctrinal quarrel with Rome, over the procession of the Spirit, the Eastern Church was infinitely disgusted to find that the Protestants, at the very time that they were wooing for an alliance against Rome, distinctly announced that here they sided with Rome. FIRST RELA The learned Melanchthon and his scholarly fellows could not fail to see that their hopes were very slender of negoTIONS OF CON- tiating a union with the East. Indeed, the attempt was only an incidental matter and the first occasion was given by the Greeks. In 1559, the patriarch Joasaph II sent the deacon Demetrius Mysius to Wittenberg, to inform STANTINOPLE WITH LU- |