laudable Fathers, or that shall be done hereafter" (that is, in fact, to the acts of A.D. 1666, 1700, and 1721, as well as to those of 1658 and 1660, to the institution of the Church Commission or Synod by Peter I., as well as to that of the personal vicariate of Pitirim, the act of the Tsar's father) "Anathema." And in his Replies, written in A.D. 1663, Nicon argues forcibly and at length that the State supremacy as then established, to say nothing of any ulterior development in time to come, if maintained and continued, was an apostasy even from Christianity itself, vitiating the whole body of the Russian Church from the least of its members to the greatest.

Now, in words and general phrases, not only the four modern Saints canonized by the Synod, but even the Synod itself, and the State of which it is vicegerent seem to agree with Nicon, and to bear witness against themselves. For they insist on the duty of adhering not only to Orthodoxy, which is a vague. word, but also to all the canons and customs of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers. The Canons and the book itself of the Kormchay are still published as having authority: they are named, together with the Scriptures, as a rule for the Bishops in the Spiritual Regulation' of Peter the Great (the fundamental Statute

1 ["The composition of a Spiritual Regulation for the guidance of the Governing Synod, was committed to Theophanes Procopovich, who made an accurate statement of the composition and object

of his State Church), and all the Bishops at their consecration still bind themselves by an oath to observe and maintain the Canons. But according to the showing of the Patriarch Nicon the whole law of God, the Scriptures themselves, and also the Canons are trampled under foot by the establishment of state supremacy in the Church; and it is impossible for those who are unresisting subjects and instruments of such a supremacy to obey or maintain the Canons. The Patriarch Nicon, who under the Tsar Alexis was ready to contend even to death, not only for abstract Orthodoxy, or for a general expression of respect for the Canons and the Fathers, but for each particular doctrine, and for each Canon in detail, had cried aloud: "It is not lawful to trample under foot Canon XXXIII. of the Apostles and Canon XII. of Antioch, and with them all the Scriptures, and the Councils, and the Fathers;" and for this he was, not canonized, but degraded from

of such a Government, of the business which belonged to it, of the duties, operations and powers of its members, according to the forms of the Ancient Councils, and the rules of the Holy Fathers. This important affair was carefully examined and discussed by a council convoked in the new capital at the commencement of the year 1721, and was witnessed by the [great functionaries in Church and State] after it had been signed and confirmed by the Tsar's hands. It was afterwards again subscribed by all the Bishops," &c., &c.- Blackmore's Mouravieff, p. 283.]

all priesthood, and kept a state prisoner under guard fifteen years, to the end of his life. And long afterwards in the time of Catharine II., when an Archbishop of Rostoff, Arsenius Matsievich, though born and bred under the ecclesiastical supremacy of the State, and himself a member of the Synod instituted by Peter I., still thought more of his oath to maintain the Canons than of his own uncanonical and untenable position, and dared to remonstrate against the final confiscation of the Church property as an act forbidden by the Canons, he was for this degraded by the Empress and her Synod to be a mere layman, and was kept all the rest of his life as a state prisoner in solitary confinement in a casemate in the fortress at Revel; and at his death the utmost care was taken that the people should know nothing about him, lest, if they did, they should regard him as a confessor.

But Metrophanes, Demetrius, Innocent, and Tichon, it was allowed to the people to venerate, till at length the people's veneration obtained their canonization. Their virtues, such as they were, were inoffensive, or rather useful; since they seemed to give a sort of respectability to all those uncanonical innovations in which they had acquiesced, or against which, at least, they had not practically contended. In the same way, if John the Baptist had been willing to say nothing about Herodias, Herod, no doubt, would have joined with all

the people in honouring John, and in regarding him as a Prophet.

In connexion with this subject I may refer to a letter of Philaret, Archbishop of Moscow, to Dr. Pinkerton, part of which the latter has inserted in his Russia, in defence of the Russian Church. In this letter, though he speaks of the Tsar Peter having changed the Patriarchal for the Synodal Government of the Church, the Archbishop makes no allusion to the constitution of the Synod, nor to the great question, which had already been virtually decided under the Tsar Alexis, whether there are two distinct powers, one spiritual and the other temporal, or only one. This question, however, is settled clearly in the "Spiritual Regulation," where the "popular error" of supposing that there are two powers is alleged as one chief reason why the former Patriarchal Government was superseded by the Collegiate. And in the code of Russian Law, published under the Emperor Nicholas, the same subject is treated without any ambiguity. In the present "Code of the Laws of the Russian Empire," and in the "Extract from the Code of the enactments relating to the Spiritual Government of the Orthodox Confession," by M. Theodore Maliutin (ed. 1859), the present relations of the Church and State in Russia are defined as follows:

1. "The first-in-rank and dominant Faith in the

Russian Empire is the Christian, Orthodox, Catholic, of the Eastern Confession" (vid. vol. i. Fundam. Imp. Laws, § 40).

2. "The Emperor, as a Christian Sovereign, is the Supreme Defender and Guardian of the dogmas of the Dominant Faith, and the Preserver of Orthodoxy and of all good Order in the Holy Church. In this sense the Emperor is called the Head of the Church" (ib. § 42).

3. "In the government of the Church the autocratic power acts through the Most Holy Governing or Directing Synod instituted by it" (ibid. § 45).

4. "The original design of laws proceeds either from special intention and direct command of His Supreme Majesty, or it arises out of the ordinary course of affairs, when, during the consideration of them in the Governing Senate, in the Most Holy Synod, and the Ministries, it is considered necessary either to explain and supplement any existing Law, or to draw up a new enactment. In this case these different authorities subject their projects, according to the established order, to the Supreme judgment of His Majesty" (ibid. § 49).