of the Bible Society, have been during the last four years popularized in the Spiritual Seminaries and Academies. And at the same time that steps were being suggested and encouraged to bring about the return of the Uniats, documents were published which seemed intended to blunt the edge of Latin sarcasms, sure to be made against a Tsar-Patriarch and against a State Church which had been penetrated by Protestant principles.

CHAPTER XIII.

Official documents published with a view to the

Uniat movement.

THESE documents are as follows :—First, in 1838,

the year before the return of the Uniats, under the title of "Imperial and Patriarchal Letters," there were published (1.) A letter from Peter I. (the Great) to the Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople, dated Sept. 30, 1672, announcing the fact that he had instituted a Spiritual Kollegium or Synod to govern the Russian Church; and requesting the Patriarch of Constantinople and the other Patriarchs to recognize as good the said College, and to correspond with it, as they had corresponded with the former Patriarchs of all Russia. (2 and 3.) Two Letters, that is, one from the Patriarch Jeremiah and one from the Patriarch Athanasius of Antioch, dated Sept. 23, 1723, identical in their wording, addressed to nobody, but recognizing "the Synod, instituted in Russia by the holy Tsar," in the manner desired ; (4.) Another letter of the same date from the Patriarch Jeremiah,

addressed to the Synod, with a copy enclosed of the XVIII. Articles of a Synod held in 1672 at Bethlehem by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Dositheus, and serving partly as an ultimatum to certain British non-juring bishops (who in 1716 had sent to Jeremiah proposals for union, and had written again in 1722), and partly as a standard of orthodoxy for the Russian Synod itself. And (5.) These same Articles of the Synod of Bethlehem ; now translated into Russ.

These XVIII. articles of the Synod of Bethlehem in 1672 sent by the Greek Patriarchs in 1723 to Russia and to England, I have said were now in 1838 published; but perhaps not so much for their own sake, as for the Patriarchal recognition of the Russian Synod which was contained in the formal letters which accompanied them. However, they have a curious and not unimpor tant history attached to them. They were originally obtained from the Patriarch Dositheus, by the French Ambassador of the day, M. de Nointel, to serve as a complete disavowal and condemnation of a former XVIII. articles of Calvinistic character, the work of Cyril Lucar, obtained some time before by the Dutch Ambassador. Dositheus (1672), in sending his own eighteen to M. de Nointel, expressed "a hope that he had done his work to the ambassador's satisfaction." Of course he had, for if Cyril leaned toward Calvin, Dositheus, in his statement of Greek doctrine, spoke with Rome.

He had overstepped the recognized bounds of orthodoxy in his statement of Greek doctrine not only by inserting the full Latin terminology of "accidents" as well as "substance," respecting Transubstantiation (the point on which the chief controversy had been raised in France, and in this he was only following the Synod of Jassy of A.D. 1643, i.e. the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila), but he admitted the Tridentine Canon of Holy Scripture; and in reply to the question, "Whether all the faithful are allowed to read the Holy Scriptures ?" he made his Synod answer roundly, "No!" For this reason, in these and in some other points, the Russian Synod of 1838, in translating the XVIII. articles of the Synod of Bethlehem into Russ, has had to correct by altering or by altogether omitting what was plainly inaccurate. And this, however delicately it might be done, was an awkward thing to do; indeed, a thing not really of their competence to do, being what they are, and no more. But there were, as has been said, other reasons for bringing forward the Patriarchal letters connected with this document, reasons which overbore the awkwardness of making alterations; and therefore this document, as being inseparable from the letters recognizing the Synod, was altered so far as seemed necessary and published together with them.

So the Greek Patriarchs, at the same time that they

replied to the letter of Peter the Great, announcing the institution of the Russian Synod and the peace of Nystadt, gloriously ending the long Swedish war (which answer to Peter, written after a long delay and hesitation, I observe, was not published in 1838);1 and while they were careful to send to Russia the XVIII. Articles of Bethlehem as their ultimatum to the British non-juring bishops, were content to recognize by letter the Russian Synod, Peter's Church Commission, without any accurate inquiry about its composition, "legitimatizing, confirming, and proclaiming it; giving it the style and title of Our Brother in Christ, the Holy and Sacred Synod, with authority to do and perform all that is done or performed by the four Apostolical and Most Holy Patriarchal Thrones; putting it in remembrance, moreover, exhorting and enjoining on it, to hold and preserve inviolably the customs and Canons of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, and all besides that the Holy Eastern Church acknowledges and observes ;" and so giving it their blessing. Of these Letters that from the Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople, signing himself "your brother in Christ," is dated 23 Sept. A.D. 1723. By the publication in A.D. 1838 of these Imperial and Patriarchal Letters, it was no doubt sought to palliate in the eyes of the Uniats those acts of Peter

[There is some obscurity here in the text. I have added some words to it.]