What is the Russian Orthodox Church?

There is one thing very important to notice in reading all these epistles, and it is very prominent here. To be saved, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and made an heir of glory, is one thing; but to bear testimony for Him in the world is another. It is quite certain that what He did before the foundation of the world I cannot lose in time; but my faithfulness or unfaithfulness will tell its own tale in the glory. The Church and a Church are two very distinct things. Constantine was the first who brought in the thought of the visible and the invisible Church. The Romish Church under the Pope, and the Greek Church under its patriarch, are each something standing in the world, and recognized as an instrument of government, an implement of political power. Napoleon felt he must have the patronage of religion of some kind, thus confessing that man could not be governed without religion, and therefore it was a thing to be supported. This brought in the thought of the visible and the invisible Church. The child of God has both now, though the candlesticks have failed. If a ray of light from God has shone down into my heart (an heavenly light shining from the face of Jesus Christ to a poor sinner gives him life for eternity), God says, "You are mine; mine in the place where you found this light; mine in the place where you are in the wilderness; mine in the counsels of eternity for glory and the Father's house."

63 The Greek Church was shorn of its glory by the inroads of the Saracens, before whom Antioch and Alexandria became extinct as to influence; and the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in the fifteenth century, seemed to close its importance too. But such was not altogether the will of divine Providence: for (the conversion of Russia to Christianity having taken place in connection with the Grecian patriarch, in the tenth century, by the baptism, first of the grand duchess, and then of the grand duke, which was followed by that of the nation) the influence of Russia is now used in favour of the Greek Church. They were first under the patriarchate of Constantinople. In the sixteenth century the Archbishop of Moscow became first a dependent, and then an independent, patriarch; and in the reign of Peter the Great, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Czar made himself the head of the Church as in England; and the patriarch and synod became subordinate to his power. The late Russian war had for its earliest pretext the rights of Greeks or Latins to the so-called holy places in Palestine.

The Eastern Church, finding its adherents mostly in Greece and Russia, was named the Greek Church from its geographical distribution; the Orthodox church from its vindication of dogma. The Greek church is opposed to many of the doctrine and practices of the Romish church. Both have been and are persecuting churches.

It is very clear that this cleavage points to the fulfilment of prophecy. If the testimony of Christendom were marked by only one religion, when the rising up on the one hand of the Romish Empire, and of that of Gog and Magog (Russia, etc.,) as the great northern confederacy takes place that would introduce a very difficult element in the working out of prophecy. On the other hand if Gog and Magog (Russia, etc.) were marked by the Greek religion, and the revived Roman Empire by the Roman religion, there would be no restraint imposed by religion when the political uprising of these empires takes place. It seems as if the details and practices that Roman Catholicism stands for, as foretold in Revelation 17, and which have largely passed into history, identifies the prophecy concerning Thyatira as indicating the Western church, and not the Eastern. The Eastern church thrives among the Slav nations; the Western among the Latin races.

When, at the end of the fourth century of the Christian Era, the Roman Empire (do not confound the Empire with the Church) became divided, Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Empire, acquired great prominence, and a conflict arose between its clergy and that of Rome, capital of the Western Empire, as to which of the two would dominate. The result was a break, and the Eastern Churches, generally adhering to the Bishop of Constantinople, founded together what is called the Greek Church, which differs but little in character from the Roman Catholic; for her parting from Rome was not through righteous and holy motives, as with Protestantism later on.

Nor does the ancient world stand alone in its desires respecting this headship of temporal and spiritual power; the desire to unite the priestly and the royal crown in one person is still vigorous on the earth. Pagans wore the double crown and united majesty and priesthood in their king. In Christian lands the, Pope formerly combined both temporal and spiritual power in his person; he was practically king of kings as well as chief priest. At the present time he is most anxious to regain it. According to Rome's theory, all kingdoms of the earth and all souls of men are his, to be dealt with as he may please. The Emperor of Russia, on different lines, is head and ruler of Church and world-kingdom also in his vast dominions, and, so far as his claims to spiritual power are concerned, the persecutions of Jews and Christians, who are not of the King's faith, are a terrible witness in our own days to what this rule signifies. The grasping after the double crown is pagan and anti-Christian in principle.

70 The progress of superstition is seen indeed in John Damascene, he refers, as we have often seen in the Fathers, to the oil of the chrism and the water in baptism, to which divine grace was added by means of the invocation of the Holy Ghost, which was, and in the Greek church is still, what consecrates the elements. These are only set apart by the words, This is my body, as a preparatory service in what is called the prothesis, and then carried in procession to be consecrated on the altar. But the language of John Damascene does shew the progress of superstition, for the strongest part of his statement is, as the editor annotator of his works, Lequien, a Roman Catholic of the order of preachers (Paris, 1712) remarks, and as is easily seen, is taken from the letter to Caesarius attributed to Chrysostom, and of that epoch, though not probably his. Now this says, "Divine grace sanctifying it [the bread] by means of the priest, it is indeed freed from the appellation of bread, but is esteemed worthy of the appellation of the Lord's body even though the nature of bread has remained in it, and it is called not two bodies, but one body of the Son," whereas in Damascene we have, "By the invocation and coming of the Holy Spirit they are supernaturally transformed (uperphos metapeiountai) into the body of Christ and the blood, and they are not two, but one and the same thing." This, "although the nature of bread remains in it" has passed away, but so had some 400 years time. A century later Paschasius Radbert first publicly introduced it in the West as we have seen. But Damascene's views were not then publicly adopted. Some six years before his death, the Council of Constantinople (754) called as general, but not received in the West, nor in the East beyond the Emperor's rule, declared the elements in the Lord's supper to be the only image of Christ. Still; though never dogmatically established, the superstitious feeling grew. I may add that in the Russian part of the Greek church, it is since Peter the Great's time in a certain sense established by law. It seems that through the efforts of Rome and the propaganda, persons from Eastern countries who had received their education there had widely propagated the views with which they had been imbued at Rome. Peter the Great brought many clergy in from the Ukraine, where Romish influence was considerable, and only then 1725) imposed on everyone consecrated bishop, an oath "that he believes and understands that the transubstantiation of the body and blood of Christ in the holy supper as taught by the Eastern and ancient Russian doctors is effected by the influence and operation of the Holy Ghost when the bishop or priest invokes God the Father in these words, 'and make this bread the precious body of Christ.'" Thus since Peter the Great's reign there has, at least by the prelates, been a positive profession of transubstantiation in Russia; but by invocation of the Holy Ghost and not as at Rome, but this is only since the beginning of the eighteenth century; that was rather late in the day. The way it came about was this: It seems Rome had been very active in seeking to win and influence the Greek church, which though itself corrupt enough, was a standing witness against her pretended catholicity, and against some of her doctrines. It had had to do with the struggles in the case of Cyril Lucaris, who had embraced evangelical doctrine and was strangled by the Porte, as was the Cyril of Berrhoea who supplanted him. By like intrigues the Ukraine or Little Russia, and the provinces at the mouth of the Danube and neighbourhood in what had once been Polish, had been very much Romanized, at the same time the clergy had at least received some education at Rome. Peter the Great, who was the ecclesiastical reformer of Russia and remodelled the whole church and monastic system, brought in thence (the Russian clergy being utterly brutish), at least educated men, and then (1725) introduced the oath as to transubstantiation. Mogilas, Metropolitan of the Ukraine, had made a catechism, confirmed in 1643 by the patriarchs, and in vogue till the Synod's Catechism by the Archbishop of Novgorod in 1766 supplanted it. I do not question that the superstition insisted on by John Damascene had borne its fruits. At the time of the Reformation, the Wurtemberg divines wrote to the patriarch Jeremias, sending the confession of Augsburg, and in his answer he quotes the words of John Damascene; he says it is the body of Christ, not a type, he calls it bread when consecrated; nor is there a hint of substance and accidents. The best account perhaps of transmutation in the Greek church will be found in Covel (p.122, C.5, Camb., 1782). But as is evidently quite modern. I thought I might notice the Greek church to complete our review.

It does not appear that the Synods of the Greek Church, in Russia at least, are hostile to the spread of Bibles which omit the Apocrypha: Russian provincial governors have assisted the distribution of the Protestant Bible. The English are apt to think harshly of the Russian people, from a political animus, which alas continues to be mutual. As would appear from what we have said of the Catechism, the ecclesiastical leaders do not withhold the Bible from the people: Bibles in the vulgar tongue may be found in the cottages of the peasantry in all parts. Thus the Greek Church, of which the subjects of the Czar are the most considerable and influential members, has been faithful to the past in a greater degree than the Roman. The earnest words of John Chrysostom (fourth century) have never lost their power: 'There can be no proof of the true faith and of Christianity, neither can there be other refuge of Christians that desire to know the truth, but the Holy Scriptures. … Formerly it was manifested in several ways which was the Church of Christ, but now there is no way of knowing which is the true Church of Christ save only by Scripture.' He further says, 'Heretics have in their schism all things which belong to Christ in truth,' amongst all else 'Christ Himself. How then can any one wishing to know which is the true Church of Christ in such a confusing likeness do so save only by the Scriptures?' (Homily XLIX, on Matt. 24).

62 But I am touching on the next point, the perpetual visibility of the church. That there is a great public body called the church of Christ is notorious. The marks you now give you rejected, when, as you alleged, Luther, Calvin, and the church of England pleaded them as such: but we cannot expect error to be consistent. But suppose I was born in Greece or Russia, and I was told that I should obey my pastors, and that pure doctrine and the same sacraments were the marks of the church visible, what would be the effect? Why I should remain a Greek, and abhor you as false. I should have to go to the Propaganda at Rome to find you out, you are so invisible in those countries. Is the true church to change with countries, and east and west? and can these be the adequate marks of it, which, in one, would make me take a body to be the true church, which in another three days' steaming would make me reject as schismatic and heretic? You are tired, I am sure, of the Greek church. But there it is, as ancient as yours, with the same claims. It has its pastors, it has its sacraments, it has what it calls the true faith, as you allege of yours, it has its visibility.

The marks you give me make me a Greek when in Russia, and you at Rome condemn me for using them when I get there, and, if I were born in Russia, persuade me they are insufficient, and that I must leave what they prove to be the true church there, and join you. Yet there are these Greeks in spite of you. God has taken care by their existence to make all your pretensions and marks futile nonsense. They are proved to be worth nothing to secure a man's finding the true church; for some of them prove two or three to be such, while the existence of the two or three proves the essential ones to be false. God has taken care that the sober godly inquirer should have patent proof, if he take the pains, that your allegations of unity, universality, visibility, perpetuity, tradition, and all the rest, are just worth nothing; because, in the dreadful departure of the professing church from God, He has taken care that there should not be unity, and, consequently, no universality; while visibility, and tradition, and perpetuity, and antiquity are as strong for one as the other, and therefore prove nothing for either. Blessed be God, the spiritual man, who has his Bible and reads it, wants no such proof. He knows that the truth of God has been perverted, the forms of piety assumed, and the power gone, the headship of Christ abandoned (though Romanists alone have ventured to set up another head, and hence are worse than Greeks), and subjection to ordinances brought in. He sees the Spirit's words fulfilled — "In the last days perilous times shall come" — the form of piety, denying the substance. But of this a word at the close.

The Greek church comes little in scene here, though partaking of much of the corruption, because it did not stand before the eye of prophecy (as it has not been, in fact), as that which represented the church in the world. No doubt the accession of Russia has given a large population and importance to it. But this is quite modern; and all the East was overrun with Saracens and then Turks, in a word, with Mahommedans; and these stood in God's eye as holding the population there - the world's religion; and the Western system as that which was the church before the world. So, we know, it has historically been.

On a rough reckoning of Christian profession, there are said to be 216 millions of Romanists; but there are 137 millions of Anglicans, Lutherans, Reformed and other Protestants, and 97 millions of Greeks, orthodox or others, with Nestorians, Copts, Abyssinians, etc. There are at least as many that bear the Christian name outside as within Romanism, though itself containing far more than any other single denomination. But unity there is none. Can any claim be weaker in presence of the facts? It is equally certain, that holy unity in the truth ought to have ever been, and that it has for ages ceased to be. The claim therefore is now demonstrably false, its absence a sure proof of ruin. Catholicity of the visible church is a self-complacent dream. And if apostolicity in the historic sense count, it is plain that Rome cannot vie with Eastern churches, which, planted by one or other apostle, were ruled by St. John, the last. Rome never had apostles save as prisoners or to die; the assembly therein was planted or ruled by none of them. As to this scripture is decisive.