the Great, upon which the Russian Church is based.

present government of the

Every church is now re

quired to have a copy of these Letters, with the XVIII. Articles of the Synod of Bethlehem, as printed in Russ appended to them.

Secondly, in A.D. 1839, the year of the return of the Uniats, there was published by the Synod a folio edition of the Canons of the Seven Ecumenical and the nine Local Councils and the Canons of the Holy Fathers, conjoined with the same in the older Kormchay, without any glosses, notes, or comments; and without any additions from the civil laws such as are added in the Kormchay, in Greek or Slavonic, in parallel columns.

Thirdly, in the same year, 1839, there was also published at the Synodal Press a new edition of the Russian text or version of the Orthodox Confession of the Faith of the Catholic and Apostolical Church of the East, as corrected and approved in presence of the Patriarchal legates in the Synod of Jassy of A.D. 1643, and afterwards approved by all the Patriarchs themselves. This Orthodox Confession, drawn up originally in Russ by Peter Mogila, was designed as a preservative for his flock in Little Russia from Protestant errors even more than from Latinism.

Fourthly and lastly, in the same year 1839 it was that the Catechism of the Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, as recast, supplemented and corrected by him

self under influences altogether contrary to those of the Bible Society, and to those under which it was originally written only for his own diocese, was published by the Synod, with the title of a Full Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church. In this catechism, which has been translated into German, French, and Modern Greek, and has been sent to the Eastern Patriarchs, besides constant references to the Holy Scriptures, and the Orthodox Fathers, and sometimes to the hymns and ritual of the Church, the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila, and the XVIII. Articles of the Synod of Bethlehem of A.D. 1672 (under the title of Missive of the Eastern Patriarchs on the Orthodox Faith) are cited as of authority.

Mr. Blackmore and I read and translated together at Cronstadt, the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila, in which we found no variation from the Greek or from the earlier Russian original. We read and translated together in the same way also the XVIII. Articles of the Synod of Bethlehem of A.D. 1672 (comparing the original Greek with the recently printed Russian version, and noticing all the alterations), and the Imperial and Patriarchal Letters which were the occasion of that Russian version.

CHAPTER XIV.

Further illustrative remarks by Mr. Blackmore.

R. B. spoke of the advantages of the Rus

MR.

sian diocesan seminaries (an institution imitated from the Uniats in the time of Peter the Great), but he doubted whether it would suit my purpose to live in the Spiritual Academy, supposing it to be permitted, as the Professors there do not live in community. He doubted, too, whether I could live in the family of a secular priest, owing to the great difference of their habits from ours. "It is well, however," he said, "if you wish to live in the Spiritual Academy that you have a letter to Count Pratasoff; for a year ago the Emperor, visiting the Academy, and finding it ill kept, transferred to the Ober-Prokuror the absolute charge of all the educational establishments of the clergy, which had before been under a Spiritual Commission." "The Russians," Mr. B. said, "in the first part of the seventeenth century, after having recovered Moscow from the Poles,

made a canon, in a synod held by the Patriarch Philaret, to rebaptize all the Latins, Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. And though this was forbidden afterwards by the Patriarch Nicon, it was only in the time of Peter the Great (who obtained a letter for that purpose from Constantinople), that they ceased to rebaptize Protestants. Still, if you would be admitted to communion" (an idea for which he was wholly unprepared) "you will have to be confirmed with Chrism: you will have to accept all the traditions of the Orthodox Eastern Church, and not only those which you may call ecumenical; you will have to confess before communicating. Perhaps you will say you have no objection, as this is not contrary to the doctrine and theory of our own Church. Then there is the Creed, on which the Greeks are very strong." I said I thought the Greek doctrine virtually agreed with the Latin; else it would be an heresy. He replied, "I cannot see that; the subject is altogether beyond human reasoning. I regret that it should ever have been moved; and we cannot defend the interpolation of the Creed, which Pearson is forced to give up." "At any rate," I said, "those Latin fathers, such as St. Augustine, who used the Latin mode of speaking before the schism, were Orthodox ; and the Greeks have never yet dared to maintain that they held and taught heresy. And if so, the existing

difference which is the same, only widened and systematized, must be reconcilable in some way now, as it was then.”

I spoke also to Mr. Blackmore of the definition of the Visible Church and of the advantage given to the Roman Catholics by the Russians and Greeks, when, like ourselves, they speak of them indifferently, whether in Russia, at Rome, or in England, as all standing on the same ground, whereas in truth there is a difference between their original communities and others of later formation, which latter I called schismatical. But he could by no means follow me in this; nor could he see that there is any fault to find with the Russians for speaking as they do. "They admit," he said, "the Latin Church to be still part of the Church, but fallen away and corrupted. If it were only to correct itself, it would recover its full place and honour; and there would then be no cause for separation of communion (rite being another thing) in Russia any more than at Rome. what they say, standing on the ground of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and the tradition of the undivided Church, from which, as they assert, their Eastern Church has never swerved, while the Latin or Roman Catholic Church has."

This is

From living much with Russian naval officers and others, he has come to perceive, so he says, that their