ARCHBISHOP LYCURGUS AND THE EASTERN CHURCH.

THE recent apparition, in the West, of Lycurgus Archbishop of Syra, Tenos, and Melos, is in one feature strikingly distinguished from that of the colonists from ancient Greece. They ever took with them, after the manner of their race, living fire from the sacred hearth of the Prytaneium of their native city, when establishing themselves and their ancestral idols in their new homes. Lycurgus came to Liverpool to consecrate a church for certain of his compatriots, and he brought with him, for this purpose, but a handful, more or less, of lifeless matter— of bones of the dead, in all probability.

But why did he not, claiming to be a chief minister of Christ, fill his hand, as it were, with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and bring with him the word of God's grace, to which St. Paul commended the Ephesians for sanctification and edification? If he did, why did he not, in the execution of his mission, exhibit it living in a spiritual sense, and shining with brighter light than the sacred fire of the heathen ancestors of his race? He is of the Church of Athanasius. Surely, in the spirit of that persistent vindicator of God's supernatural truth, he might well have put the subtle and inquisitive Greek on his guard, and strengthened him against the rationalism of the West, now so audacious and aggressive. With the discretion and practical zeal of Chrysostom, that eloquent and sensible expounder of God's word in the early Eastern Church, he might well have urged men of a keen, crafty, and selfish race to the diligent study of Scripture, as a protection against the infectious presence of deceit, fraud, and immoral luxury now so prevalent among the Western men of commerce. But of no such effulgence of the truth, in the form of homily, sermon, or address to the Greeks at the consecration, have we heard. He is said to have performed certain washings of the Communion Table and its vicinity, with prayers following; and then to have consummated and crowned the consecration of the church by depositing, in a cavity in the pillar supporting the Table, the relics of a martyr. (Pontificale Ecclesiæ Græcæ, p. 659.) By this location of the material element with which the sainted spirit was once connected, his patronage with God, in aid of the future ministry at that Table, and of the services there to be celebrated, was supposed to be secured, and the specific mission of Lycurgus of Syra seems to have been accomplished. In fact, he had then effected what with the Greeks is the consecration of a church. (Ibid. p. 660.)

Of this consecration of a house for the service of God, by a depositing of relics, representatives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York are reported to have been passive witnesses by previous arrangement. If we can rely upon the statements made in newspapers, in the formal presence of accredited representatives of the chief authorities of our Church, which has repudiated the superstitions engendered after the apostolic era, Archbishop Lycurgus exhibited, in real and earnest action, one of the most puerile and indefensible of these superstitions. It has been alleged, perhaps in extenuation, that some representative of the Patriarch of Constantinople was present at the consecration of the church erected near that city in memory of the English who died in the Crimean War, and it was deemed right and proper thus to respond to that act of ecclesiastical courtesy. Such a reciprocation of civilities could scarcely have occurred immediately after the Reformation. In the seventeenth century, an Anglican clergyman would, we think, have been denounced at Constantinople as a Calvinist, a character then and there intensely odious. In England the vital power which overthrew the superstitions of Rome was more or less a love for truth as truth, with a jealousy of the dishonour wrought to God by the admixture, in His service, of the false and spurious; and consequently such a spectacle as that at Liverpool would then have been intolerable. But the times have changed, and are still in rapid flux, and with them the spirit of nations, and perhaps the temper also of their respective churches. What, then, is the specific character of this movement in a moral and spiritual sense, and what does it import with regard to the future of Christianity?

By the Archbishop of York Lycurgus has since been entertained, and attended the Minster service. The Bishop of Lincoln has received him as his guest; and by his repetition of the Creed in Greek, in his private chapel-service, he managed to omit the "Filioque," which is rejected by the Greek Church, a singular token of condescending courtesy. Archbishop Lycurgus was present, in his hierarchical robes, at the consecration of certain bishops at Westminster Abbey. Afterwards he was entertained at dinner by Dr. Stanley and others in the Jerusalem Chamber; then he received degrees at both of our Universities; and ultimately he was presented to Her Majesty the Queen. We have, in fact, dealt with him as with one whom we delighted to honour; and what does all this mean? Sympathy will account for a part of it; sympathy with the representative of an ancient race, to whose genius and intelligence, taste and language, modern civilization is so much indebted, and in the rescue of whose descendants from the oppressive tyranny of the Turk, England was so deeply inte

rested some forty years ago. Veneration for the representative of a Church which still embraces the first apostolic foundations, Antioch, Ephesus, and Corinth, and is all that remains of the primitive Eastern Church, the Church of Clement of Alexandria, of Origen, the Gregories, Cyril, Basil, and such meu, the most conspicuous of the early doctors of Christianity, will account for still more. But can it be that a desire for anything like a real and practical union of the Church of England with that of Greece has operated, in any great degree, as one of the factors in this elaborate and cordial reception of Lycurgus?

We are most unwilling to suppose that such learned and discerning men as the prelates of York and Lincoln meant their reception of the Archbishop of Syra to be interpreted as much beyond an act of courtesy and hospitality. If they countenance an effort, now said to be in contemplation, to effect an union of the two Churches, it must surely be with the expectation that, during the process, the authorities of the Greek Church may have their eyes opened, and perceive that, like us, they may reform their Church without any essential repudiation of the best traditions of the primitive times, and may consequently imitate our example by some purification and rectification of doctrine, worship, and religious practices. They cannot be ignorant of the fact that, in principle and almost in form, all superstitions, with the exception of that with regard to the supremacy of the Pope, which we detected, condemned, and rejected at the Reformation, are now stifling all spiritual life in the Eastern Church. Have these been so withered up in the progress of time, that now they are powerless for evil? Have they been so evacuated of the noxious elements, through the presence of which they appeared to our Reformers injurious in themselves and dishonouring to God, by the purgative energy of modern theology and science, or of recent civilization, that now they may be tolerated, without injury to man or dishonour to God? And can we, notwithstanding the presence and activity of such superstitions in that Church, lawfully and prudently receive it as it is, unchanged, into anything like a real union and fellowship? These learned and godly prelates, we are sure, do not, and cannot, think so.

We, too, do not think so; and in support of our opinion, we now propose to exhibit the doctrine of the Eastern Church in one or two of its chief Articles, as exemplified by certain extracts. But before doing so, we would advance a few remarks on the element in our fallen nature to which we trace the creation and development of the distinctive features of these doctrines. If of this, the parent, we take a just view, we do not think we shall be disposed to trifle with the offspring.

No loyal Protestant will differ from us when we assert that

there was in the Church of Rome at the Reformation, and still is, much that did not exist in the Apostolic Church, even in principle or in the seed. The existence of such, therefore, is not to be accounted for, or submitted to, on the ground, were that sufficient, that it was owing to a process of regular and undisturbed development. We must recognize in it the operation of a factor foreign to the living principles of the Apostolic Church, diverse in nature and in effect, in order to reach a sufficient explanation. And what can that factor have been but the morbid element in man, that disorderly instinctive activity of the moral death superinduced at the fall, which takes its name from its specific inode of operation, and is called superstitious, which, for convenience, we will personify and designate superstition. The achievement of such an effect as the difference between the Church of Rome and the Apostolic Church is certainly within the scope of its capacity, and worthy of its nature. For superstition distinguishes itself, in operation, by these remarkable practical powers. It is creative. It forms of itself conceptions or ideas spontaneously when there is an adequate stimulant. It is enabling. We have through it the strange magical power of believing that what it conceives and creates, exists and is real, and of making it the ground of emotions and feelings and actions, that is, of believing what is not. It acts by way of excitement and suggestion. At first its creations are ideal, suggested by something which is real, to which it adds its fancies and its practices, and by which they are sustained as parasites having foliage and flowers often in tender and sympathetic if not beautiful harmony with that which they embrace. But afterwards these creations degenerate from the ideal into realities, which generally are gross, and often in monstrous discord with what originally suggested them, and frequently destructive of it. Superstition will not rest until the appetency, which is its motive principle, is either restrained and neutralized by the presence and operation of a force supplying the true wants of man, or is satisfied. And what is the appetency of superstition, but the want of the carnal mind, the want of something influencing the senses of man directly or indirectly? Hence the creations of superstition are ever becoming more and more such as the senses can appreciate, that is, increasingly gross. Such, then, was the enemy to which the doctrines and worship of the Apostolic Church, in the East as elsewhere, were exposed. It was comparatively inactive as long as spiritual life in the mass of the Church was in vigour. For, then, faith realized spiritual things, the unseen Father, Son, and Spirit, and the spiritual contents of Christ's salvation; and, quickened by spiritual doctrine, the Church found all to satisfy the true wants of the soul in these spiritual things, and

rested and rejoiced in them, and grew in grace and in the sustaining knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But after the apostolic era, spiritual vitality began to flag; as had been foreseen and foretold, the faith of the many drooped and became feeble, and love waxed cold. Then it became hard to realize the unseen, and difficult to grasp, possess, and enjoy the spiritual. A want of something more palpable, more accessible to the apprehension of the carnal mind, and to the perception of the senses, more congenial and agreeable to the natural heart, than the spiritual doctrines and simple and chaste worship of the Apostles, began to be felt instinctively. It was then, as we presume, that superstition began to find distinctly its opportunity for pernicious suggestions, creations, and perversions, often directly borrowed from heathen delusions, and made use of it from generation to generation with deplorable success.

If such be a just description of the nature and operation of superstition, we may assume that its offspring is not likely to be either innocent or harmless. So thought the martyred Ridley. Such was his view and sense of the enormity and evil, for example, of the Romish doctrine with regard to the Lord's Supper, that he rejected it at the cost of his life. We shall now furnish extracts to show that this very doctrine, as held by the Eastern Church, is precisely that of Rome, with one exception only.

First, however, we would direct the attention of our readers to Cyril Lucar, the most able and interesting person who has appeared in the Eastern Church since the eighth century. He was a native of Candia, born when that island was in the hands of Venice; and he received his education at Padua. He crossed the Alps, passed some time in England and Germany, and returned to his native land a confirmed and enlightened adversary of Popery. About 1619 he became Patriarch of Constantinople, and in 1621 he published a confession of faith. The Jesuits were then in force in that city. They were busy in the effort to resist and repel the influence of Protestantism, which had already reached the East in some degree. They were also strenuously engaged in carrying out the purpose of Rome, initiated at the Council of Florence in 1439, and sustained ever since, to secure the subjugation to herself of the Eastern Church, or of as many of her children as possible. By these emissaries of the Pope, Cyril Lucar was passionately and vehemently resisted. It is said that, by pointing out the Calvinism of Lucar's confession, they stimulated the Greek hierarchy to condemn his doctrines, and to defy his influence; and that they also intrigued with the civil government for his removal. In the issue he was put to death by the Turks, in the year 1638. He was succeeded by one of his prominent