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Correspondence (1716–1725)

Eastern Patriarchs and the Nonjurors, ed. Williams, 1868

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The Correspondence between the Nonjuring Bishops and the Patriarchs of the Eastern Church, which is here published entire for the first time, has been hitherto chiefly known from the full notice of it in Mr Lathbury’s History of the Nonjurors, in which he has given all the letters of the British Bishops to the Patriarchs and others, but a short summary only of the replies on the part of the Orthodox.

As the Correspondence itself, with Dr Brett’s brief Introduction prefixed, will best tell its own tale, and almost defies analysis,—except such as is given in the running table of contents in the headings of the pages,—a few prefatory pages may be best devoted to the more general purpose of indicating the position which this Correspondence occupies in the history of the Divisions of Christendom, and of the attempts to heal them; and of endeavouring to estimate its importance in any future designs to bring about a Reconciliation between the Orthodox Eastern Church and the Churches of the Anglican Communion.

I. It must be distinctly understood then that this was no isolated attempt to establish relations of Intercommunion with the Orthodox Church, resulting from a spasmodic yearning after the restoration of the broken unity of Christendom. It was one of a series of such efforts, indicating in the Reformed Church of England a painful sense of isolation from the rest of the Catholic family, and, at the same time, testifying, by the very craving, its title to be reckoned as a living member of that family; for in Churches, as in individual souls, “love is life’s only sign,”—

“No distance breaks the tie of blood;
Brothers are brothers evermore;
Nor wrong, nor wrath of deadliest mood,
That magic may o’erpower;
Oft, ere the common source be known,
The kindred drops will claim their own,
And throbbing pulses silently
Move heart towards heart by sympathy¹.”

The once popular theory of the Asiatic origin of the British Church has been found to rest on too precarious a foundation to warrant the belief that an Oriental parentage had continued to exercise a conscious influence on the religious feelings and sympathies of its children after its amalgamation into the Latin Communion; but it might well be that the eminent services which an Asiatic Metropolitan in the throne of Canterbury had conferred upon the Early English Church, in consolidating its foundations, edifying it in the unity and purity of the Catholic Faith, and in illuminating it not only with sacred but with secular learning;—that these services, faithfully recorded by Bede, were considered, not only to have laid the Church under a lasting debt of obligation to Theodore of Tarsus, but also to have established a bond of fellowship with the Eastern Church, which the unhappy controversies of later times could not altogether sever.

However this may be, certain it is that in no part of Western Christendom was the reconciliation of East and West, supposed to have been accomplished at Florence, hailed with more joy than in England. The Emperor of the East and the Patriarch of Constantinople were met in Italy by envoys from King Henry VIth, bearing letters of hearty welcome and encouragement², couched in no formal terms of cold court etiquette, but in language indicative of the most entire appreciation of the evils and scandals that had resulted from the long estrangement of the great branches of the Christian family, and of the benefits to the cause of truth that might be expected to follow from the approaching reconciliation. “In this most sacred work,” he says, “occasion is given to all the faithful everywhere of great joy and exultation. And for ourselves, we consider that we have been most happily and graciously dealt with: greatly felicitating ourselves, and counting it a special gift of God, that these sacred and happy auspices, to result as we trust in a fruitful accomplishment, should have fallen in our age; and may we shortly see with our own eyes the most blessed work of this most sacred union brought to the wishedfor happy effect, to the honour and praise of the Almighty and Immortal God, and to the amplification and increase of the Christian Name and Religion and Faith.” And in a congratulatory letter to the Pope³ on the supposed attainment of this happy consummation, he expresses his ineffable joy and his fervent gratitude to God for this restoration of Unity, in language so extravagant that I decline the task of translating it; as it would appear unreal to all but the very few who have deeply pondered the misery of a divided Christendom, and the blessings that might be anticipated from its Reunion. Immediately on receiving the joyful tidings, he had ordered “public thanksgivings to be offered up, with processions, litanies, and prayers, in all places subject to his dominion; with all fervour of devotion and rejoicing of the people; and to be thenceforth continued:” and accordingly we find in the episcopal Registers of this time directions for giving effect to the king’s wishes.

The disastrous results of the attempt made at Florence to compass a compromise of religious differences, for purely political purposes, did not encourage a repetition of the experiment; and for nearly two centuries the English Church seems to have ignored the very existence of its Eastern sister. It can be no matter of wonder, however it may be of regret, that its earlier Reformers, in endeavouring to carry out their avowed principle of returning to the doctrine and discipline of the early Church, did not take counsel with that Branch of it which professes to have preserved the primitive and apostolic traditions unadulterated, and whose boast it is to have “been crystallizing the old doctrines” while the Roman Church has been “developing new ones⁴”. Had they done so, their performance might have corresponded more nearly with their ideal than in some respects it actually does; and there might have been less of truth and justice in the charge brought against our Reformed Church by her most candid and friendly critics,—of having broken with the past⁵; a charge which even the most loyal and dutiful of her children, if they be honest and impartial, as well as competent judges, will not venture to deny.

Yet the omission of the great Church of Constantinople from the sweeping charge of error brought against the other four Patriarchates in the original Edwardine Articles, and ever since retained, could scarcely have been accidental; and the deliberate rejection of the critically important words ab æterno from the Fifth Elizabethan Article, while adopting all the rest of the Würtemburg profession concerning the Holy Spirit, looks as if it must have had intentional reference to the great controversy between East and West⁶.

It is true indeed that the Correspondence which shortly afterwards took place between the Patriarch Jeremiah and the divines of Würtemburg⁷ was not encouraging; and the Elizabethan Theologians may have concluded that the temper of the Orientals as exhibited in their Letters, no less than of the Puritan section of their own Communion, was equally inimical to any negociations for reunion, and therefore made no such attempt.

It was natural that, after the Reformation had severed the connection of the National Church with the See of Rome, its Divines should appeal, for controversial purposes, to the continual protest against Papal usurpations maintained for centuries by the Eastern Patriarchates; as an argument also against the necessity of outward communion with the Chair of S. Peter as a condition of Spiritual Life; and accordingly we find this testimony adduced by the best instructed of our Anglican writers.

The Private Devotions of the greatest of our Jacobean Theologians reveal a deeper and more truly religious feeling of sympathy and charity, influencing some at least of the most devout; and probably many an English Churchman from Bishop Andrewes’s days to our own, while offering up their prayers, under his guidance, morning and evening, in the very words of the Orthodox Church, have owed it also to him, that the state of that venerable and much-enduring Community has never been long absent from a place in their intercessions, as they have pleaded before God, “for the Churches,—Catholick, Eastern, Western, British;”—“The Church Ecumenical, Eastern, Western, our own,” “for the Catholick Church, its establishment and increase; for the Eastern, its deliverance and union;” and lastly, in the very words of S. Chrysostom’s Liturgy, “for the stability of holy Churches of God, and the union of them all.” How much these constant remembrancers of our Eastern brethren before the mercyseat, may have had to do with keeping alive among us an interest in their welfare, God only knows; but certain it is that, in the worst and darkest periods of the Church’s history since the publication of Andrewes’s Devotions, there has existed an earnest yearning in the hearts of some of the most loyal and devout members of our Church for the renewal of relations of amity with the Church of the great dogmatic Fathers of the East; and those aspirations have occasionally found expression in the interchange of acts of courtesy and liberality, which, while they have demonstrated the fact that the kindly feeling entertained for them by us is cordially reciprocated, have left us very much their debtors.

The first interchange of civilities indeed took place during Bishop Andrewes’s lifetime; and we may well share Dr Neale’s regret, that the Metropolitan chair was not then filled by him, as it was generally expected it would have been⁸. The benefit of a correspondence between such an earnest inquirer after truth as Cyril Lucar undoubtedly was, and one who had so firm and comprehensive a grasp of it as Bishop Andrewes had, might have been fraught with most blessed consequences to the Churches which they respectively represented. The Oriental Patriarch might have been rescued from his perilous fall into the depths of Calvinistic error, to which he sacrificed his tranquillity of mind, his life and his reputation; while the devout Anglican Bishop might have found an opportunity of giving practical effect to his aspirations after Unity, and his sympathy with the suffering Churches of the East, expressed in his Private Devotions. “Dîs aliter visum,” and the Correspondence between the Patriarch and Archbishop Abbot, though highly creditable to both Prelates⁹, resulted in nothing more serious than the education of a protegé of Cyril in the University of Oxford, which seems to have been of questionable advantage to the individual or to the Church of the East, in which, however, he afterwards filled the evangelical throne of Alexandria¹⁰.

The protection afforded by Sir Thomas Rowe, the Ambassador of Charles I. at the Porte, to the unfortunate Cyril Lucar, while the object of the vindictive and unrelenting persecution of the Jesuits, which ended only with his murder, was but an early example of that chivalrous championship of the weak against the strong, which so long distinguished our foreign policy in the East, and had no kind of religious significancy; so that the splendid monument of the Patriarch’s gratitude to King Charles I., which is now the most precious of the priceless treasures of our national collection of Manuscripts, the Codex Alexandrinus, may be contemplated with honest pride by those who most deeply feel the disservice which the Calvinistic tendencies of the donor did to the best interests of his Church, and to the sacred cause of Reunion; of which more will be said in the sequel.

If faithful reproof of evil be, as it undoubtedly is, an act of Christian duty as well as charity, then the Greek Church earned the national gratitude for the earnest remonstrance which it addressed to the English Government on the murder of Charles I.; while the tardy appreciation of that atrocious crime, after more than two centuries, by a living Divine of the Greek Church¹¹, as a palmary example of the internecine struggle between the Catholic and Puritanical elements in the English Church and nation, has an important bearing on the momentous question of reunion, and shows how the inscrutable wisdom of God can educe good out of evil.

Neither was the proscription of the faithful and orthodox clergy of the Anglican Church by the Independent and Presbyterian Government without some present fruit in the propagation of juster notions of the characteristics of the English Reformation than had before prevailed in the East. It was no small mark of the confidence of the Greek Metropolitan of Achaia, that he importuned Dr Basire on two occasions to preach to his assembled suffragans and clergy. But most remarkable of all was the impression produced on Päisius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, he writes, “the better to express his desire of Communion with our old Church of England, by mee declared unto him, gave mee his bull or patriarchal seal in blank (which is their way of credence) besides many other respects¹².” And it may be that the friendly relations established by him with the Patriarchs of Antioch and Constantinople, as well as with Jerusalem, and the wide circulation of the Church Catechism¹³ in a Romaic translation, to which he ascribes his “success in spreading amongst the Greeks the Catholic doctrine of our Church,” may have counteracted for a time, or in some measure, the persistent efforts of the missionaries of the Propaganda to identify us with the Protestant sects; and may account for the gratifying fact which I have had constant occasion to remark, that, after a century and a half of apathy on our part and of misrepresentation on the part of others, the Greeks are still ready to take so favourable a view of the position of the Anglican Church in the commonwealth of Christendom.

The restoration of our polity both in Church and State led to a renewal of official intercourse with the Eastern Church in Turkey; and there are not wanting in the unpublished records of that period many indications of the friendly relations subsisting between the representatives of England at the Porte and the higher clergy of the Orthodox Eastern Church.

This is specially patent in the Correspondence of John Covel, Chaplain first to Sir Daniel Harvey, then to Sir John Finch, in which capacity he resided at Constantinople from the year 1670 to 1677. It must, however, be admitted that his intercourse with the Greeks was prompted rather by curiosity than by higher motives, as he himself is foremost to proclaim¹⁴; and that the interest taken in the Eastern Church by the leading English Divines had rather a controversial than a religious bearing, and so had little tendency to Reunion.

This interest however serves to illustrate and explain one of the Documents contained in this Volume, which, as it is connected with some eminent names, calls for further notice.

Appended to the Reply of the Eastern Patriarchs to the first communication of the Nonjurors, is a “Synodical answer to the question, What are the sentiments of the Oriental Church of the Greek Orthodox? sent to the lovers of the Greek Church in Britain, in the year of our Lord 1672¹⁵.” It is dated January 10th, 1672, and as it synchronises with Covel’s residence at Constantinople, and allows time for the delivery of the question and the Synodical consideration of the answer after his arrival, there can be no difficulty in connecting these “lovers of the Greek Church” with his mission. This being once done, Covel himself enables us to identify the most prominent names among them; and few of greater weight are to be found in the annals of our Reformed Church.

Near the commencement of the Preface to his great work entitled “Some Account of the Greek Church, &c. &c.,” which he did not publish until 1722, the year before his death, he says, “In the year 1670 I was appointed and sent as Chaplain to his Excellency Sir Dan. Harvey, then Ambassadour from King Charles the Second at the Ottoman Port. This caused the Reverend Dr Gunning and Dr Pearson (then our two Publick Professors at Cambridge), Dr Sancroft [then Dean of S. Paul’s], and Mr Womock and several others, to importune me strictly to inquire into this Matter,” viz. the doctrine of the Real Presence, as held by the Greeks, “after I arrived at Constantinople.”

It is somewhat remarkable that he should take no notice of this Synod, held at Constantinople during his residence there. The probable reason is, that it had no distinct bearing upon the particular controversy with which he and his English correspondents were most deeply concerned. It cannot fail, however, to give additional interest to this Document to know that it was elicited by the inquiries of the learned Author of “the Exposition of the Creed,” among others; and it will doubtless be a satisfaction to “the Reunionists” of the present day to hear that that great Theologian, together with the author of “the Paschal or Lent Fast apostolical and perpetual,” and the Archbishop who, under two kings, so nobly suffered for conscience’ sake even to imprisonment and deprivation, were in their day reckoned among “the lovers of the Greek Church in Britain.”

I say nothing here of the polemical aspect of Dr Covel’s communications with the higher Greek clergy. His correspondence with them, which is preserved in the British Museum, is throughout of the most friendly character; and it is clear that the intercourse which such men as Covel, and his predecessor as Chaplain at Constantinople, Thomas Smith, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and his contemporaries, Paul Ricaut, Consul at Smyrna, and R. Huntington, Chaplain at Aleppo, maintained with the Orthodox clergy, must have given the latter a favourable impression of the zeal and learning of the Anglican clergy and laity; and if a succession of such officials had but been perpetuated in the British factories in Turkey, the difficulties in the way of reunion might not have been aggravated, as they have undoubtedly been, by the misrepresentations of lax and unfaithful clergy, and of careless ill-instructed laity, throughout the Levant, during the whole of the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries.

Covel was succeeded in the Chaplaincy to the Embassy by Edward Browne, who seems to have been attracted to the post by a genuine interest in the Greek Church; for he writes soon after his arrival at Constantinople (January 26th, 1677)—“This is a very quiet healthy place, where a man may understand the affairs of the Greek Church best of any¹⁶.” In what spirit he entered upon his duties and studies we learn from the same letter; and how many a faithful heart has unconsciously re-echoed his touching language from that day to this! “It doth go hugely against the grain to see the crescent exalted everywhere, where the Cross stood so long triumphant: and I could wish this mighty tyrant turned upside down, but that ’tis only a silly wish and hath nothing in it: but really it would grieve any Christian in the world to see this grand empire in such hands as it is, and the Stately Church of Santa Sophia so abused, and a most pleasant fruitful country possessed by infidells.”

His account of, probably, the first introduction of the XXXIX. Articles of the English Church to the notice of the Œcumenical Patriarch, and his reflections thereon, are sufficiently amusing; “There lived here some years since a Greek who, by conversing with the Embassadour’s servants, learned to speak English and then went over into England and there turned Quaker. This fellow hath been persuaded by the body of that mad-capp people in London to turn into vulgar Greek the principles of the Quakers’ religion and also the XXXIX. Articles of the Church of England, and they have sent them both over to the Patriarch of this city, appealing to him for judgment which is the best Confession of Christianity, theirs or ours: and this Patriarch hath sent my Lord Embassadour an account of it. That silly people will never leave plaieing the fool. Yet I confess this is wiselier done of them than their attempt to convert the Great Turk (as once they did here, and their preachers were soundly drubbed for their pains) and the Pope, where one starv’d himself to death in pretence of a miracle which he could not do.”

How the Œcumenical Patriarch was impressed with the XXXIX. Articles, presented to him in this remarkable manner, we are not informed; but it may be feared that his judgment upon them would scarcely be so favourable as that of the three Patriarchs had been on the Church Catechism presented to them by Dr Basire.

The almost simultaneous publication of two works on the Greek Church, one by Thomas Smith¹⁷, Covel’s immediate predecessor in the Embassy Chaplaincy at Constantinople, the other by Paul Ricaut¹⁸, British Consul at Smyrna; the former dedicated to the Bishop of London, the latter “Written at the command of his Majesty” Charles II, while it indicated the wide-spread interest that prevailed on the subject, must have done very much both to deepen that interest and to supply authentic information. That this interest was not confined to one section of English Churchmen is manifest from the next fact which has to be recorded—the most remarkable of all connected with the subject until the last act of the Convocation of Canterbury in 1868.

I allude to the significant recommendation of the Royal Commissioners on the Prayer-book, appointed Sept. 17th, 1689, in the very crisis of the Anglican Church, between the suspension and deprivation of the Nonjuring Bishops and Clergy; who were consequently excluded from serving on the Commission. This recommendation is to be found in a note to the Nicene Creed on the words, “Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son;” and is as follows: “It is humbly submitted to the Convocation whether a Note ought not here to be added with relation to the Greek Church, in order to our maintaining Catholic Communion¹⁹.” Considering the very many questionable alterations suggested by the Commissioners, it may well be that this proposed concession to the Eastern Church would have cost our own too dear, had Convocation agreed to adopt it at that time; but it may be found worthy of consideration in the further progress of negociations, which it may be hoped are even now pending, for the reconciliation of differences between the two Communions.

The next chapter in the history of the movement towards the restoration of Intercommunion has been so well written²⁰, and so recently published, that it need only be glanced at here. I allude to the establishment at Oxford of a College for the education of youths of the Greek Church; or rather the conversion of Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College) in that University, to this purpose; which thus came to be called for the time “the Greek College.” One of the most active promoters of this scheme was Dr Woodroff, who became Principal of Gloucester Hall August 15, 1692, and whose letter to Callinicus, Patriarch of Constantinople, explaining the details of the scheme, bears date March 4, 1694-5. It is clear from this letter that he had been in communication with the East some time before. The wars and tumults which he alludes to, as having hindered the fulfilment of the designs of “the lovers of Greece” in England, were doubtless the confusions antecedent to and consequent upon the Revolution of 1688. We may therefore well suppose that the undated Scheme of the Greek College, first published by Mr Ffoulkes in 1863, was issued immediately after Dr Woodroff’s appointment to the Principalship of Gloucester Hall; and it had doubtless taken some time to mature. I shall then be warranted, I believe, in connecting this Scheme with another document not hitherto published, preserved among the Tanner papers²¹; which discovers to us the interesting fact, that the idea of this Greek College at Oxford originated with the Greeks themselves, and that the phil-hellenes in England were but carrying into effect the suggestion of an eminent prelate of the Orthodox Eastern Church. This is a petition of Joseph, Metropolitan of Samos, to Archbishop Sancroft, in which he touchingly sets forth the miseries and misfortunes of the Greeks, owing to the tyranny of the Turks and their own deplorable ignorance, “by the corruption of their Church, which dayly groweth more and more corrupted.” For a remedy to which, he suggests, “that 12 scholars out of Greece be constantly here to be instructed and grounded in the true doctrine of the Church of England; whereby (with the blessing of God) they may be able dispensers thereof, and so return to Greece aforesaid to preach the same; by which means your petitioner conceives the said people may be edified:” and he importunes him to communicate this scheme to the King and the Bishop of London, “to the intent some yearly Revenue may be allotted to carry on so pious and good a work.” This petition is undated; but, as the next dated letters, preceding and following, in the collection bear 1682 and 1683 respectively, the document may safely be assigned to one of those two years. Sancroft’s interest in the Greeks when Dean of S. Paul’s, we have already seen. Henry Compton, who occupied the See of London from 1675 to 1714, had already manifested his interest in the Greek Church by accepting the Dedication of the English edition of Thomas Smith’s Book. His support of the scheme for a Greek College had apparently been secured before the original programme was issued; and Woodroff, in his Letter to the Patriarch Callinicus, expressly says that he wrote, “in the name of the most godly Metropolitan of Great London, as well as in his own, and also in the name of very many more, very desirous of, and affectioned towards, your interests.” The Metropolitan of Samos was that Joseph Georgirenes who, having been driven from his See, settled in London, where a building was erected for him, in the then aristocratic quarter of Soho, for the performance of the Divine Services according to the Greek rite²²; the identical building, which, after many years of desecration, was reconciled and restored to Christian Worship according to the Anglican rite, only eighteen years ago, and has since become widely known under its original Greek dedication—S. Mary’s, Crown Street, Soho.

These then were the principal promoters of this scheme of a Greek College at Oxford, commenced with such hopeful promise about 1694, under the enlightened presidency of Dr Woodroff, and its disastrous failure in less than ten years, however deeply to be deplored, was owing mainly to causes which its friends and promoters were powerless to controul.

During its brief existence another dignified Greek Ecclesiastic visited this country, and the éclat with which he and his company were received in the two Universities attests the Catholic sympathies of both the Academic bodies.

In the Catalogue of Oxford Graduates²³, appears the name of “the Most Reverend and Honourable the Metropolitan of Philippopolis, Exarch of all Thrace and Drovogia²⁴, created D.D. Sept. 1, 1701,” and those of “Athanasius, Archdeacon; Neophitus, Archimandrite; and Gregorius, Protosyncellus,” all made M.A. at the same date; while we are further informed, by a letter written by E. Thwaites to Dr Charlett, on the following day, that “his Physician was made D. Med.²⁵”. The writer of this letter says “’twas a mighty show, and the solemnity was very decent... The concourse was soe great, I have not seen it greater, except the Act.”” His Grace made us a very excellent speech, all in plain proper hellenistick Greek,” which lasted nearly half an hour, and evidently made a favourable impression. “He is a man of admirable voice, and makes a graceful appearance. He commended the English nation for hospitality; the Church of England, the University, the Chancellor’s civility to him, the Vice-chancellor’s kindness, &c., in very round periods.”

Dr Woodroff, as Principal of the Greek College, was naturally foremost in the entertainment of the Metropolitan and his company at Oxford; and Thwaites says of him, “Indeed Dr Woodroff has exerted himself, and shown us that he does understand Greek.”

His visit to Cambridge was equally successful. He was specially recommended to Covel’s attentions, who was then Master of Christ’s College, by Archbishop Tenison, who afterwards wrote to express his satisfaction at the Metropolitan’s reception, and his thanks to Covel²⁶: and although I have not been able to find his name among the Graduati Cantabrigienses, yet it is certain he was decorated with the same distinction at Cambridge as at Oxford; for among Covel’s Papers in the British Museum is preserved the original Oration delivered by him before the Chancellor and Senate, “when admitted to the Degree of Doctor in Divinity, in the University of Cambridge,” September 13, 1701²⁷.

Meanwhile, the emissaries of the Church of Rome, regarding with not unnatural jealousy and suspicion the growing tendency to reunion between the Orthodox Church of the East and the Anglican Communion, bent their utmost efforts to counteract and defeat the endeavours of the phil-hellenes to bring the blessed work to a successful issue. Three Greek youths who had been sent to England for their education, in 1698, were enticed away from Oxford; one by the promise of better accommodation in Paris, where Louis XIV. had been prevailed upon by Pope Innocent XII. to establish a College for Greeks; the others by the hopes of being sent back to their own country; and a curious account is given by Mr E. Stephens, of the adventures of these youths²⁸. It would seem too that the machinations and intrigues of the Latin emissaries were favoured by the shabby treatment which the students met with at Oxford; where, “though they who came first were well enough ordered for some time; yet afterwards, they and those who came after them were so ill accommodated, both for their studies and other necessaries, that some of them staid not many months, and others would have been gone had they known how; ... so that this good work, which had raised great expectations among the Greeks, no little jealousy among their and our adversaries, the Papal faction, ... is now like to prove an occasion of the indignation of the Greeks, the grief of our friends, the derision of our adversaries, and the shame of our Church and nation²⁹.” These apprehensions were only too fully realised, notwithstanding the endeavours of good Mr Stephens to avert the catastrophe, and to provide a less ambitious substitute for the Oxford College, which should accomplish the same end. On March 2nd, 1705, the Registrar of the Greek Church at Constantinople announced the Patriarch’s decision on the subject, in a letter to Mr Stephens, in which he reveals to us another element in the failure of the scheme. “The irregular life of certain priests and lay-men of the Eastern Church living in London, is a matter of great concern to the Church. Wherefore the Church forbids any to go and study at Oxford, be they never so willing³⁰.”

Mr Stephens had earned the gratitude of the Orthodox Church by the loyalty of his conduct throughout all these complicated proceedings, and he was not a man to be discouraged by defeat. Convinced as he was, that “a restitution of Catholic Communion between the Greek Church and the Church of England is practicable³¹,” and that this would “appear in due time by matter of fact;” fortified in this conviction by Bishop Stillingfleet’s vindication of the former, as “more truly Catholick than the Papal Faction do pretend, and the Protestants, through their impostures have believed;” regarding it as “a matter of great duty and obligation to be heartily endeavoured on both sides,” which would be, “when accomplished, of like benefit to both, and of mutual advantage against the common adversaries of both;” he knew perfectly well that it was “not to be expected but so good a work will be encountered with all the opposition which the Papal faction, and the Devil himself, can raise against it;” of which he considered the recent proceedings to afford a “notable instance.” As the Oxford College had failed, the Catholic aspirations of this large-hearted and devoted man were fain to seek another current for their energies³²; and that at the very time when the narrowing spirit of Erastianism and indifference, (which culminated in the expulsion of Wesley and some of the best blood of the Anglican Church), was trying to the utmost the temper and the loyalty of himself and his small company. With this, however, we have here no concern, except as E. Stephens and his friends doubtless formed a connecting link between the Archbishop of Philippopolis and the next Metropolitan of the Orthodox Eastern Church who is known to have visited England.

This was Arsenius of Thebais, who was the original cause and, throughout, the intermediary of the Correspondence between the Orthodox Patriarchs and the Nonjuring Bishops contained in this Volume. A more detailed account, therefore, of him, and of the primary object of his visit, may here be given; especially as I have it in my power to illustrate the narrative with some highly interesting original documents, which have hitherto escaped the notice of Lathbury and others who have treated, in greater or less detail, this passage of History.

The immediate object of his visit to England is thus stated by Wanley³³. “Gerasimus the aged patriarch of Alexandria resigned his office, that he might go and end his days at Monte Santo [Mount Athos]. The people elect Samuel Archbishop of Lybia in his room; but Cosmas, Archbishop of Mount Sinai, purchasing the favour of the Grand Vizier, the Church of Alexandria is so much oppressed that they send hither Arsenius, Metropolite of Thebais, and Gennadius a Cypriot and Archimandrite, and Kathegumenos of Alexandria, with four Deacons, an Anagnostes, a Cook and an Interpreter, to crave the assistance of good Christians.” Covel, who had been now for many years engaged on his great work³⁴,—which he says in his Dedication was “the Product of his studies during his Residence at Constantinople,” and the long delay in the appearance of which he feels it necessary to excuse,—was eager to avail himself of this opportunity of adding to the testimonies he had already collected of the doctrine of the Greek Church on the subject of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, and his letter to Wanley of December 13, 1714³⁵, is obviously not the first in which he had urged him to procure Arsenius’s judgment on this matter; which it appears from Wanley’s reply he had already done some months before. I am not here concerned with the controversial aspect of this Correspondence, which indicates, on Covel’s side, a strong prejudice against the Greeks, and a suspicion of ulterior designs on the part of the Metropolitan; both of which were certainly in great measure justified by the flagitious simoniacal practices of the higher Clergy at that time, which encouraged the Turkish Officials in the venal tender of the chief Ecclesiastical dignities to the highest bidder; a frightful scandal which has now, thank God, been entirely removed. Wanley’s letters, on the other hand, manifest a much more kindly feeling towards them, both in himself and in others; though it is very evident that both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities would have been greatly relieved by their speedy departure from the country, which Queen Anne would have purchased with a “Bounty” of £200. “The Bishop of London,” [Robinson], writes Wanley³⁶, “is much harassed about them and cannot as yet get them to accept the £200 given by our late pious Queen for their Departure....The men (although we have reasons sufficient to persuade and satisfy us that they are True and Honest men), must quickly be gone; we are against a Brief or any General Collection for them; and we do not like that the Universities should be pestered with them. The poor Archbishop cried out like a child, when my Lord of London told him he must depart....They are extremely necessitous, and live in much misery and want. I have lent them some pounds, since I saw you, and have gotten them some charities; and yet their numerous Family consume all.” … and their protracted stay in the country must have been a burden to themselves and to all interested in them. Protracted indeed it was, for in a letter of Wanley to Dr Tudway³⁷, dated December 24, 1715 (i.e. more than a twelvemonth after the last-cited letter), he says, “The Greek Metropolite of Thebais will come to Cambridge soon after Twelf-day on purpose to collect your Charities: pray acquaint the Master [Dr Covel] of this:” and it was still seven months later than this, viz. in July 1716, according to Dr Brett³⁸, that the Nonjuring Bishops first opened negociations with him, still being in London, on the subject of Intercommunion between the Eastern Church and themselves; and their first communication, of which he was to be the bearer, is dated August 18th in the same year.

II. And now, having arrived chronologically at the principal subject of this volume, and having already, by anticipation, declined a theological discussion of the Correspondence, which would be in fact to reopen the interminable controversies to which it relates, I shall content myself with a brief review of the actual circumstances of the two parties; in order to ascertain how far they were respectively qualified to represent the Anglican Communion and the Orthodox Church; and how far, consequently, the results arrived at in these communications on either side are to be considered binding in the prosecution of any further negociations.

i. First then, with reference to the ecclesiastical position of the Nonjurors, during the first quarter of the eighteenth century.

Whatever admiration we may entertain for the flower of the English Episcopate who refused, from conscientious motives, to transfer their sworn allegiance from the infatuated monarch, whose arbitrary and illegal proceedings they had so nobly resisted, to one whose title appeared to them to be based on mere usurpation; whatever allowances we may make for their learned and pious adherents among the Clergy, who like them “took joyfully the spoiling of their goods” rather than compromise honour and loyalty and ecclesiastical order, by recognising uncanonical Bishops intruded by an Erastian Government; the question of whose jurisdiction must have presented a complication of difficulties, which we of this age, at least, may well have learned, by the painful experience of a Colonial Province and Diocese, to appreciate; there can be no difficulty now in condemning the policy which attempted to perpetuate the succession of a Nonjuring Hierarchy: a policy to which some of the most pious of the deprived Bishops were decidedly opposed³⁹. Of the canonical consecration of the substituted Bishops there had never been any doubt, and the question of their jurisdiction had been determined by the demise of the last survivor of the Nonjuring Bishops (Ken) in 1711; who had indeed voluntarily ceded his jurisdiction to his second successor in the See of Bath and Wells in 1704. The newly-consecrated Nonjuring Bishops did not even pretend to be the legitimate successors of the deprived Bishops in their several Sees; for they never assumed territorial titles; and the presumptuous claim of Collier to be “Primus Anglo-Britanniæ Episcopus,” was a distinct usurpation on the Metropolitan See and on the Primacy of Archbishop Wake, who succeeded Tenison in 1716, and whose dignified protest against this violation of all hierarchical order will call for further notice presently.

Ecclesiastically then, the Nonjurors were in an utterly false position; and it is not a little remarkable that the confusion of their ideas on the order and precedency of the Christian hierarchy should be found reflected in the very first of their Proposals to the Eastern Church. Their cool suggestion for subverting the gradations of the Patriarchal thrones, settled nearly fourteen hundred years before by the authority of General Councils, and for transferring the Primacy of the Universal Church to Jerusalem⁴⁰, for no conceivable reason—or at the most “for an idea”—was as great a blunder as they could have committed at the outset of their correspondence; for it could not fail to create a prejudice against them as innovators of the first water, in the minds of those who were so wedded to ancient traditions, and so jealous of their privileges and prerogatives, as the occupants of the three Patriarchal Sees, which it was thus proposed to degrade and subordinate to the fourth, were sure to be.

Doctrinally, they were perhaps hardly better qualified to represent fairly the Catholic aspect of the Reformed Anglican Church; for although they undoubtedly maintained the distinctive principles of Sacramental Grace as opposed to the graceevacuating tenets of the Puritans, and were very far indeed from being identified with the Luthero-Calvinists, as the Easterns mistakenly insinuated⁴¹; yet they had certainly imbibed some of the peculiar notions of their Scottish associates—with reference especially to the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist—which appeared nothing short of blasphemy to the Orthodox of the East⁴².

I cannot think that they have fairly laid themselves open to the charge of proposing to connive at what they believed to be idolatry or creatureworship in the Greeks⁴³, because they were content to leave the cultus of the Saints and Picture-worship open questions. … and it is very worthy of note that their scruples were respected by the Greeks, who shewed no disposition to enforce these practices as a condition sine quâ non of intercommunion. I cannot see any surrender of principle in this exercise of mutual forbearance. I am quite sure that it is from this spirit and temper only that any accommodation of existing differences is to be hoped for.

For one thing the Nonjurors certainly deserve more credit than has usually been accorded to them⁴⁴: that is, for their undeviating, uncompromising adherence to their own honest convictions at all hazards. Eager as they naturally were to fortify their own position by an alliance with the Church of Russia and the East, they shew not the slightest inclination to accommodate their statements to the prejudices or predilections of their Eastern correspondents; and they further contrive to combine with the utmost deference for the high position of the dignified Ecclesiastics whom they address, a spirit of honest simplicity and manly independence, highly creditable to the moral tone of their small community. But no high qualities could compensate for the false position which they had assumed, and which they were themselves forced to abandon some years later.

ii. The abnormal condition of the Orthodox Church of the East, in respect both of doctrine and discipline, during the latter half of the 17th and the first quarter of the 18th century, was very unfavourable to a faithful representation, on the part of its Bishops, of the traditionary system of that venerable Community.

…⁴⁵⁴⁶ These evils had been greatly aggravated by the Italian Propaganda on one side, and the Protestant emissaries on the other; who, after the tragic exit of Cyril Lucar from the scene, did not cease the strife to which his unhappy publications had given rise. His ill-starred attempt to force the Greek Church into Western controversy, as a witness in favour of Calvinistic error, had naturally produced a violent reaction; and the Jesuits had no sooner recovered their ascendancy in the East, through the diplomatic superiority of France, than they shewed that they knew how to turn to their own account the suicidal blunder of their rivals.

That the Council of Bethlehem, held under Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1672⁴⁷, was convened in their interest, and that much of its language was adopted under their inspiration, seems evident on the face of the Articles; pervaded as they are throughout by the spirit of Latin Scholasticism, utterly alien to the genius of Greek dogmatic Theology. Contemporaneous history confirms the internal evidence of the Documents⁴⁸, so that there can be no question that Cyril Lucar, as author of the “Eastern Confession of the Orthodox Faith,” is logically responsible for the Council of Bethlehem in 1672, as well as for that of Constantinople in 1638 and of Jassy in 1642, in all which his teaching was expressly condemned, though at Bethlehem his memory was vindicated. The utterances of the Council of Bethlehem, subsequently accepted by the other Eastern Patriarchates, including Russia⁴⁹, committed the Orthodox Church on several points to the language of Western Dogmatism; and then the theory of immutability, which it has uniformly maintained, pledged it both to reconcile these new definitions with the theological language of its ancient doctors, and to maintain them in all future time; so that the writings of Cyril Lucar, in the reaction which they produced, might have spared Leo Allatius the pains of his elaborate proof of the perpetual Consensus of the Oriental Church with the Latin on the points in controversy between the latter and the Protestants. … Such an ultimatum could have had but one result, even if the negociations had not been abruptly broken off by the demise of Peter the Great; unless indeed the Church of Russia, which had shewn much less rigidity, and more of cordial sympathy than the Easterns, could have brought about a reconciliation on more equitable terms.

I cannot help suspecting that the Eastern Patriarchs had by this time become aware of the true position of the Nonjurors, with whom they had been corresponding under the erroneous impression that they represented the whole Anglican Communion. When they found that they were but an insignificant and gradually diminishing fraction from the National Church, it was obviously the part of wisdom to break off the Correspondence, as courteously but as quickly as possible; and this might readily be effected by the proposal of utterly inadmissible terms.

It is true indeed that Archbishop Wake’s Letter to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, in which he exposed the schismatical position of the Nonjurors, is dated two years later than the last letter of the Patriarchs to the Nonjurors⁵⁰, but it is highly probable that the facts had already come to their knowledge through the British Ambassador at Constantinople, or his Chaplain. It was this Chaplain, Thomas Payne, who had first informed the Archbishop of the Correspondence, the year before; and it is a very remarkable fact that, although Wake was promoted to the See of Canterbury in 1716, the very year in which this Correspondence was commenced, it had been continued at intervals for eight years before he had any knowledge of it. This Letter of Wake’s, while disavowing in the name of the English Church, all complicity in the proceedings of the Nonjurors, regards the existing relations of the Anglican to the Eastern Church as most intimate. His ground of complaint against the Nonjurors is, that “they have endeavoured to draw you off from the Communion of our Church.” He recognises the Faith of the two Churches as identical on all points of greater moment; and intimates that it is distance alone that hinders anything more than Communion in spirit and intention.

The Patriarch to whom this Letter is addressed was Chrysanthus, the immediate successor of his uncle Dositheus in the See of S. James, who could, no doubt, well appreciate the ecclesiastical complications of England. He had as long ago as 1716 presented to the University of Oxford, through Sir Robert Sutton, then British Ambassador at the Porte, a manuscript copy of the great work of Adam Zoernikaff on the doctrine of the Procession⁵¹, in Latin, accompanied with a Letter from himself in Greek, in which he gives an account of the author and of the composition of this work; as also of his reasons for presenting it to the University of Oxford⁵².

I am not aware of any further intercourse between the Orthodox Church of the East and our own for more than a century; and certainly the circumstances under which it was renewed cannot be regarded with any feelings of satisfaction by those who are jealous of our national honour, or of the fair fame of the Anglican Church in the Commonwealth of Christendom. Assuredly this survey would be incomplete without some notice of these facts, and therefore, distasteful as is the task, it shall be undertaken, if only to vindicate the memory of the highest Ecclesiastical authority in the Anglican Communion, the “alterius orbis Papa,” from all complicity in the scandal that his well-intentioned measures occasioned, and which is perpetuated to this day within the limits of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

That the Anglican Mission to Jerusalem in 1841, inaugurated by the late King of Prussia with a munificence truly royal, was designed as an embassy of peace and good-will to the Eastern Church, is a fact too plainly avouched to be gainsaid. Yet, in the view of what has since occurred, it may not be amiss to put the evidence on record in a more permanent form than has yet been done.

In the Commendatory Letter addressed to the Eastern Patriarchs by Archbishop Howley⁵³, of which Bishop Alexander was the bearer, the Metropolitan of Canterbury spoke as follows: “In order to prevent any misunderstanding in regard to this our purpose, we think it right to make known unto you that we have charged the said Bishop our brother, not to intermeddle in any way with the jurisdiction of the Prelates or other Ecclesiastical dignitaries of the East, but to shew them due reverence, and to be ready, on all occasions and by all the means in his power, to promote a mutual interchange of respect, courtesy and kindness.” The ultimate end of this “testimony of our respect and affection” was thus distinctly avowed—“our hearty desire to renew that amicable intercourse with the ancient Churches of the East, which has been suspended for ages; and which, if restored, may have the effect, with the blessing of God, of putting an end to divisions which have brought the most grievous calamities on the Church of Christ.”

It was not generally known till twelve years after, that these Instructions, while in entire accordance with the private sentiments of the Archbishop, were also the result of a compact between the Civil and Ecclesiastical rulers of our country on the one hand, and between the Foreign Office and the Ottoman Porte on the other. This most important fact is authenticated on the indisputable testimony of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the time, in a Letter to the present Bishop of Oxford⁵⁴. Lord Aberdeen was further enabled from his intimacy with the Archbishop, to bear witness to his personal wishes and opinions, as well as to his official sentiments towards the Eastern Church. “I should say that, in a religious point of view, he was opposed to all attempts at proselytizing from the Greek Communion, and that he did not contemplate giving any sanction to secessions from it. He always spoke with great regard of the Eastern Church, and looked forward with hope to the possibility of some nearer connection hereafter between that Communion and the Church of England.”

I crave indulgence to add to this public testimony of the veteran Statesman my own private witness. When I had been nominated by the Archbishop as Chaplain to Bishop Alexander, I was instructed by his Grace to pay special regard to the Oriental Churches, in which he knew me to be already deeply interested: and he spoke to me of the Christians of the East with feelings of the most tender and compassionate sympathy and affection; claiming for them the utmost consideration and loving forbearance, on account of their long subjection to a degrading bondage; citing on their behalf, almost with tears, the Homeric adage:

Ἥμισυ γάρ τ’ ἀρετῆς ἀποαίνυται εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς
Ἀνέρος, εὖτ’ ἄν μιν κατὰ δούλιον ἦμαρ ἕλῃσιν⁵⁵.

If then the operations of this peaceful mission have been utterly contrary to what was designed; if instead of contributing to heal the divisions of Eastern Christendom, it has aggravated them rather; if, instead of conciliating the Prelates of the Oriental Church, it has incurred their suspicion and contempt, if not their enmity, by petty aggressions on their lawful jurisdiction—feebly emulating the Latin Propaganda, without the same excuse; if, besides exhibiting the scandal of public faith broken before the Infidels, and ecclesiastical order violated in the face of all Christendom, it has rudely shaken the confidence of learned and pious members of our own Communion, and alienated their attachment from the Church of their baptism; yet let the pious memories of William of Canterbury, of Charles James of London, and, I will add, of Frederic William King of Prussia—the author and promoters of the scheme, be exempted from the blame. Let all lie at the door of those who are even eager to bear the responsibility.

I turn to a brighter page; the last in this hasty review of the various attempts that have been made for the Reunion of the Anglican and Eastern Churches; in which I have been fain to pass over many individual essays in the same direction, which however have had no small influence in keeping alive on both sides an interest in the subject. But it would be ungrateful not to record the eminent services rendered to the cause, in our own day, by two most prominent, as well as most able, labourers in this field. Of the success of the persevering and persistent endeavours of Mr William Palmer, formerly of Magdalen College, Oxford, under circumstances of great difficulty and discouragement, to bring about a better mutual understanding between our own Communion and the Orthodox Church, I can speak from my own personal observation, both in Russia and the East. In the former country in particular the name of Deacon William had become familiar as a household word to many of the most enlightened and pious churchmen and laics, who could appreciate his indefatigable industry and deep though varied learning; and although his secession to the Latin Communion, which seemed to stultify so completely his former professions with reference to the Orthodox Communion, and which was deeply felt, I know, as an injurious slight to the Church which he had studied so deeply and was supposed to sympathise with so entirely⁵⁶, could not but counteract in great measure the good effects of his former labours; yet his learned Dissertations on the Eastern Communion, which have done so much to clear up misunderstandings, and to vindicate the position of the Orthodox Church in her controversy with the West, still remain to us, and have taken a place in the literature of the subject second to none in importance for their permanent bearing upon the momentous issues of the question.

Of Dr Neale’s abundant labours in the same field it is less necessary here to speak, as they are fresh in the recollection of all interested in the movement, and will, no doubt, be fully recorded in the Memoir of his Life, which is understood to be in preparation. I am deeply persuaded that it is mainly owing to the earnest labours of these two eminent Divines that the true position of the Anglican Church in the Christian Commonwealth is so much better understood in Russia and the East than it was a quarter of a century ago;—its exceptional position, I mean, of antagonism to Papal usurpation and scholastic Dogmatism on the one hand, and to Calvinistic heresy and Lutheran laxity on the other.

Doubtless too, in the order of Divine Providence, they had much to do in paving the way for that movement, far wider than any that have preceded it, which, originating in the far West only six years since, is now in mid career, and is destined, as we trust, to result in the consummation of the fervent aspirations of so many generations of devout English Churchmen.

This movement was inaugurated by the appointment of a Committee of the General Convention of the American Church, in October, 1862, “to consider the expediency of opening communication with the Russo-Greek Church,” and “to collect authentic information bearing upon the subject.” This was followed by the appointment of a Committee of the Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury, in the Session of July, 1863, “to communicate with the Committee” of the General Convention, “as to Intercommunion with the Russo-Greek Church,”—a scope, it will be observed, far less restricted than that implied in the terms of the appointment of the American Committee. The basis was shortly afterwards still further extended. In the first Report of the Committee of Convocation, it was suggested that any overtures towards Intercommunion “should be extended to the other Eastern Patriarchates, and not confined to the Russo-Greek Church,” and accordingly, on the reappointment of the Committee, in the Convocation of 1866 (June 25), the Archbishop assented “that the terms of their appointment, which had been limited before to Intercommunion with the Russo-Greek Church, should be extended to the Oriental Churches, or Orthodox Communion, in general.” The results of the deliberations of this Committee must be sought in the three Reports which they have presented to Convocation; the last and most important alone may be here recorded, in the Resolution unanimously adopted, at their suggestion, by the Lower House of Convocation at its last Session, July 4, 1868.

“That this House humbly prays his Grace the President that he will be pleased, in conjunction with his brethren of the Episcopal Order, to take steps towards opening direct negotiations with the Eastern Patriarchs and Metropolitans, with a view to establish such relations between the two Communions as shall enable the Laity and Clergy of either to join in the Sacraments and Offices of the other without forfeiting the Communion of their own Church.”

Such then is, in brief, the history of the various attempts which have been made from time to time since the period of the Reformation, to repair one at least of the breaches of the spiritual Sion. May we not hope that the united endeavours of the American and English branches of the Anglo-Catholic Church, conducted by the mild wisdom and large charity of the present Successor of Archbishop Theodore in the throne of S. Augustine, may be crowned with success? His letter, addressed to the Patriarchs, Metropolitans, and the rest of the faithful of the Eastern Church, is at least a sufficient indication of his own desire to forward this blessed work to the utmost of his power; and there is every reason to believe that the counsels which now guide the deliberations of the Œcumenical Throne at Constantinople and of the Holy Governing Synod at S. Petersburg are equally favourable to the project of reunion.

Opposition of course must be expected, from within as well as from without; from the modern representatives of the busy Latin faction which bent its utmost energies to defeat the work of good Mr Edward Stephens and his friends; and from a considerable section of our own countrymen, who have no faith in an united Christendom, however enjoined by our Lord and forming the main subject of His great Intercessory Prayer. But the chief difficulty and hindrance will be found, if I mistake not, in other active agencies more obviously of the world.

These I have it in my power to indicate in the forcible language of a high dignitary of the Eastern Church⁵⁷, which may, I trust, find its way to the hearts of some whom it more immediately concerns, as well as of others who have it in their power to abate the scandal of which the Metropolitan of Chios complains. I had expressed a fear lest the absorbing, anxious Ecclesiastical business of the Synod, of which he is a member, should withdraw him from his learned theological labours on behalf of Unity. He informs me that my fears are groundless; “for although I am much occupied, I do not cease to labour for it, and am composing a whole book, in which I treat of the differences between our Orthodox Church and the Anglican, and of the method for their arrangement.

“But often, as I write, I feel my hand weakened and my courage fail, as I consider the insuperable difficulties interposed by a certain portion of the public Press of England.

“No one can deny that, for the success of the saving project of Unity, it is necessary that the way should be smoothed by some suitable preparation; that is, by a closer drawing together of the bonds of brotherhood which happily unite the Orthodox of the East with the great and renowned English Nation. But while that portion of the English Press inveighs bitterly against the Orthodox peoples of the East, and specially against our nation; slanderously charging us with bigotry, intolerance, fanaticism; and drenching us with many other insults; while a certain class of politicians ruminate these calumnies to satiety; mercilessly wounding the sensitive honour of these peoples, and so opening the chasm more widely; can there be any hope of Union? This is what you have to fear.

“There is then the greatest need that this stumblingblock should be removed, by a more just appreciation of affairs in the East. A change of the language of the English Public Press to a more just and sympathetic tone, will accomplish very much towards a preparation for the Union of the Churches.”

Thus far my revered Correspondent, whose remarks can only be met with a sorrowful admission of their truth, and a suggestion, which it would not be candid to withhold, and which I am confident he will take in good part.

Admitting the injustice of much of the language of which the Metropolitan complains; unreasonable as the bitter anti-Hellenic prejudice that exists in many minds, must appear to those who have learnt to appreciate the national character at its true worth—with all due allowance, certainly, for the considerations urged by Archbishop Howley—…

…⁵⁸

…

…

The principles laid down by the Metropolitan Gregory for the arrangement of the Union between the Armenians and the Orthodox, in the Treatise just referred to, are those alone on which the differences between ourselves and the Greeks can be adjusted; and if he can but persuade the Divines of his Church to adopt as the basis of negotiations his favourite maxim, borrowed from Theophylact, “It is not every custom that can sever from the Church; but such only as lead to difference of Dogma “—he will have earned the lasting gratitude of all who” pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” and have done much to promote the consummation of that happy Reconciliation, which, as has now been shewn, is not the dream of a few unpractical enthusiasts of this nineteenth century, but has been the earnest desire and longing of successive generations of the ablest and best of our Anglican Divines, among whom are reckoned the honoured and revered names of Andrewes and Sancroft, of Pearson and Wake, of Howley and Blomfield, of Longley and Wilberforce.

One word more in conclusion. The active energies of the many Antichrists now in the world, are in full operation, both in the East and in the West, against the One Truth, of which the Church of the Living God is the divinely appointed Guardian and Witness. Only this year there has issued from the Imperial Press at Constantinople a controversial work of very great ability, attacking the fundamental doctrines of our Common Faith, and maintaining the doctrine of the Koran, and the divine mission of Mohammed, by entirely new arguments, sometimes of exceeding plausibility. This book, entitled Izhar-el-Hakk, “the Demonstration of the Truth,” is circulated under Government sanction, and sold publicly in the bazaars. What havoc such a work is calculated to make among the sheep of Christ’s flock in the East must be known to its chief Pastors, and has been already proved, to some extent, by the apostasy of a few. Will the Church never master the simple lesson, so well understood by “the children of this world,” so forcibly inculcated by her own Divine Head, that “Unity is strength,” and “that every Kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation”?

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