CHAPTER XXIX.

The Archpriest's view of Mr. Palmer's position and

S

appeal.

EPTEMBER 21 [o.s.].-Returned from Cronstadt,

where I had been from Monday, September 14, reading Mouravieff's "History of the Russian Church,” and translating from the Greek and Russ, with Mr. Blackmore, the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila.

That same day I visited the Archpriest Koutnevich, who had now read through my Introduction to the XXXIX. Articles, and he is pleased with it. But he finds in it some differences. He instanced the Procession of the Holy Ghost, Images, Relics and Invocation of the Saints. And the Sacraments are not

distinctly said in it to be seven. I said, "The technical manner of speaking of 'the Seven Sacraments' has been borrowed by the Greeks from the Latins." He said they had had it from the beginning. Then he insisted on the authority of the seventh Nicene Council, as having been approved by the Pope, the Patriarch

of the West. He said that any Synods held in Germany, France, and England, were as nothing in the balance, and that the veneration of Images also had been in the Church from the beginning; and that the Invocation of the Saints had been in the Liturgies and Offices from the very first. He said more than once that I came very near to them: but still he would not allow that the Latin doctrine of the Procession was not a heresy, nor need cause a breach of communion. the same time he confessed that there had actually been intercommunion, even after the controversy had arisen.

At

As for my desire to be admitted to communion, he said, "You have your own chaplain here; you need not come to us." "How," I asked, " can the Church of England be in your diocese?" "But," he said, "in point of fact here it is, agreeing with your Church in England in all things, using the same ritual, &c.; so also there is here the Lutheran, and the Calvinistic, the Latin, the Armenian, in all perhaps a dozen churches and confessions." I replied, "I recognize no such confessions, but only one Confession or Faith, viz. that of the Creed. There cannot be de jure two confessions, or two bishops, in one place. I am no member of the Church of England in Russia, but of the Church of Russia-in wish and intention at least. If the English here are in point of fact voluntarily separate, I cannot

For your

in this defend them, nor can I defend you. Bishop thinks that, if there are more Churches than one in the world, and in his diocese too, he need not trouble himself about that. And our people in like manner never so much as think of the Bishop of the place, but behave as if they had brought out England itself in their ships."

He answered, "Certainly there ought to be only one church in one place, and we pray that so it may be. But, if we were on that account to give communion to the English, while they differ from us in points of such great importance, that would be extremely dangerous, and it would scandalize the people beyond anything. Even for yourselves it would be so; your people too would be scandalized, and think that their bishops and clergy had made a league with heretics and idolaters. Oh! that would cause too great scandal."

Among other things he asked, "What do you say to confession? for no one can communicate in our church without first confessing. And how would a Lutheran or a Calvinist be received as a proselyte to your church?" I replied, "Practically there is no discipline; theoretically, any one, having weighty matters, that is, excommunicable or mortal sins, on his conscience, ought to confess, and the form of absolution is the same as that used in the Roman (and in the Russian) Church, and an alien, Lutheran or Calvinist, ought to

be examined as to his belief of the Creed, and to his having been validly baptized and confirmed, but this is almost unknown. The priest, in visiting the sick, is directed to question him whether he has not on his conscience any weighty matter, and, if he has, to exhort him to confess it, that he may be absolved; and, in giving notice for Holy Communion, he exhorts all such as cannot satisfy their own conscience to confess themselves to the priest and to obtain absolution. And all without exception are required to give notice to him, before presenting themselves as communicants; but in practice none of these rules are attended to." He observed on this, "It is very insufficient merely to invite people to confess, in case they feel their own conscience burdened."

He lent me a Treatise on the Procession by Theophanes Procopovich (compiled from a larger work by Adam Zarnikav) and I lent him "the Book of Bertram the Priest on the Holy Eucharist," the doctrine of which, as expressed in an Anglo-Saxon Homily of Elfric for Easter Day, was subscribed and reaffirmed for the Church of England in the time of Queen Elizabeth. This was with a reference to that expression "spirituale corpus" in my "Introduction" which he had disliked.

CHAPTER XXX.

Conversations with M. Mouravicff.

N the same day called upon M. Mouravieff, who in the meantime had been reading the " Origines Liturgica" of Palmer, of Worcester College, lent to him by the Metropolitan Philaret, and to the Metropolitan by Mr. Blackmore. He turned to a place where the author argues that it is superfluous to invoke the Saints since they pray for us all the same whether we invoke them or not, and said: "A custom of the Church is not to be suppressed on such grounds as that, nor on the pretext that anything, however good, may be abused." He disallowed the author's defence of Queen Elizabeth's consecrations of a new Episcopate, and insisted that the Sovereign has been admitted by the Anglican Church as her head, while to say this of the Russian Church is a most absurd calumny. He observed that all the due forms, of obtaining the consent of the Eastern Patriarchs, had been observed (that is, when the present collegiate government of that Church was instituted) even by Peter the Great, who, he admitted,