similar though less odious spirit in the chief Muscovite clergy, and the worldly policy of the Russian czar, the chief cause of its perpetuation.

The clergy of Constantinople have not hesitated to resort to forgery in order to do away with the legal and binding force of the act of their own predecessors in subscribing and promulgating throughout their entire jurisdiction the act of union established at the Council of Florence. Gennadius, the first patriarch elected after the Turkish conquest, was one of the prelates who signed the decree of the Council of Florence, a learned and virtuous man, and is believed to have lived and died in the {6} communion of the Holy See. Actual communication between Constantinople and Rome was, however, rendered absolutely impossible by the deadly hostility of the conquerors to their principal and most dangerous foe. The slightest attempt at any intercourse with the Latin Christians would have caused the extermination of all the Christian subjects of the Ottoman empire. It is difficult to discover, therefore, when and how it was that the supremacy of the Roman Church, whose actual exercise was thus at first impeded by the necessity of the case, was again formally repudiated by the patriarchs. There is a letter extant, written in the year 1584 by the Patriarch Jeremiah to Pope Gregory XIII., in which he says that "it belonged to him, as the head of the Catholic Church, to indicate the measures to be employed against the Protestants," and requests him in virtue of this office to point out what measures can be taken to arrest the advance of Protestantism. This is the last official act of the kind of which there is any record. The patriarchs and their associates have relapsed into an attitude toward the Holy See which is equally schismatical and arrogant, though through their degraded condition far more ridiculous than that which was assumed by their predecessors before the Council of Florence. In order to nullify, as far as possible, the legal force of the act of union promulgated by that council, they have resorted to a forgery, and have published the acts of a pretended council under a patriarch who never existed and whom they call Athanasius. There is no precise date attached to these forged acts, but they are so arranged as to appear to have been promulgated soon after the return of the emperor and prelates from Italy, and before the Turkish conquest; and in them, some of the principal prelates what signed the decrees of the Council of Florence are represented as abjuring and begging pardon for what they had done. They are said to have been moved to this by the indignation of their people and a sedition in Constantinople in which the rejection of the act of union was demanded. The forgery is too transparent to be worthy of refutation, and could never have been executed and palmed off as genuine in any other place than in Constantinople. They have also put out a book called the "Pedalium," in which they revive all the frivolous pretexts on account of which the infamous Michael Cerularius and his ignorant ecclesiastical clique of the Bas Empire pretended to prove the apostacy of the Bishop of Rome and all Western Christendom from the faith and communion of the Catholic Church, and the consequent succession of the Bishop of Constantinople to the universal primacy. The clergy of the patriarchate have taken the position that the Catholic Church at present is confined to the limits of what we call the Greek Church. They claim for themselves, therefore, that place which they acknowledge formerly belonged to the See of Rome, and thus seek to justify and carry out the usurpation of supreme and universal authority indicated by the title of ecumenical patriarch. The absurdity of this is evident, from the very grounds on which the title was originally assumed, and the traditional maxims which directed the policy of the ambitions Byzantine prelates throughout the entire period of the Greek empire. The original and only claim of the bishops of Constantinople, who were merely suffragans of the Metropolitan of Heraclèa before their city was made the capital of the empire, to the patriarchal dignity, was the political importance of the city. Because Constantinople was new Rome, therefore the Bishop of Constantinople ought to be second to the Bishop of ancient Rome; and not only this, but he ought to rule over the whole East with a supremacy like that which the Bishop of Rome had always exercised over the whole {7} world. This false and schismatical principle is contrary to the fundamental principle of Catholic church organization, viz., that the subordination of episcopal sees springs from the divine institution of the primacy in the See of St. Peter, and is regulated by ecclesiastical canons on spiritual grounds, which are superior to all considerations of a temporal nature. The Patriarch of Constantinople has long ago lost all claim to precedence or authority based on the civil dignity of the city as the seat of an empire. According to the principles of his predecessors, the primacy ought to have been transferred to the Patriarch of Moscow, when the Russian patriarchate was established by Ivan III. Nevertheless, he still continues to style himself ecumenical patriarch, and the eight metropolitans who form his permanent synod continue to keep the precedence over all other bishops of the patriarchate, although their sees have dwindled into insignificance, and other episcopal towns far exceed them in civil importance. In point of fact, the baselessness of his claim to universal jurisdiction has been recognized by the Eastern Church. His real authority is confined to the Turkish empire, where it is sustained by the civil power. Russia has long been independent of him. The Church of Greece has completely severed her connection with him. The schismatical Greeks of the Austrian empire, and those of the neighboring provinces, are severally independent. The false principle that produced the Eastern schism in the first place thus continues to work out its legitimate effect of disintegration in the Eastern communion itself, by separating the national churches from the principal church of Constantinople, which would itself crumble to pieces if the support of the Ottoman power were removed. The privileges of the See of Constantinople have now no valid claim to respect, except that derived from ecclesiastical canons ratified by time, general consent, and the sanction of the Roman Church. The instinct of self-preservation ought to compel its rulers to fall back on Catholic principles, and submit themselves to the legitimate authority of the Roman Pontiff as the head of the Catholic Church throughout the world. They are following, however, the contrary impulse of self-destruction, to which they are abandoned by a just God as a punishment for their treason to Jesus Christ and his Vicar, and in every way seeking to strengthen and extend the barrier which separates them from the Roman Church.

This policy has led them to do all in their power to establish a dogmatic difference between the Oriental Church and the Church of Rome. Not only do they represent the difference in regard to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, as expressed by the "Filioque" of the Creed, which was fully proved at the Council of Florence to be a mere verbal difference, as a difference in regard to an essential dogma, but they have brought in others to swell their list of Latin heresies. The principal dogmatic differences on which they insist are three: the doctrine of purgatory, the quality of the bread used in the holy eucharist, and the mode of administering baptism. Only the most deplorable ignorance and factiousness could base a pretence of dogmatic difference on such a foundation. In regard to purgatory, the Roman Church has defined or required nothing beyond that which is taught by the doctrinal standards of the Eastern Church. The difference in regard to the use of leavened or unleavened bread, and the mode of baptism, is a mere difference of rite. In regard to the last-mentioned rite,