, at present,--all these things are against
us,--all these things tell on the mind which really lives and dwells on
antiquity, and looks to the pure Apostolic Church. Still, though they
weaken, they do not overcome our cause. But from all these objections the
witness of the Eastern Churches is free. They were never subject to Rome,
but to their own Patriarchs; they derived not their Christianity from her:
the Priesthood, and the pure unbloody sacrifice, and the power to bind and
to loose, remain undisputed among them: the Eastern mind cannot conceive a
Church without them. They have received no reformation from those whose
lives were a scandal to all Christian men: they are not mixed up with the
Lutheran or Calvinistic heresy: nor has Erastianism eaten out their life.
Yet, if we are schismatics, so are they, and on the same ground. Moreover
the Roman Church has again and again treated with them as parts of the true
Church. It is only in comparatively modern times, that as the hope of
re-union became fainter, the line of denying their being members of the One
Body has been taken up. I have seen even so late as the time of Clement the
Eighth a letter of that Pope to the Czar, in which he treats him as already
belonging to the Church. Moreover the Eastern Church has put forth the best
and most convincing sign of Catholicity, _life_: to her, _since her
separation from Rome_, and to this particular attention must be claimed, is
due the most remarkable conversion of a great nation to the Faith which has
taken place in the last eight hundred years--Russia with her Bishops, her
clergy, her monasteries, her convents, her Christian people, her ancient
discipline, her completely organised Church system, her whole country won
from Paganism by the preaching of Monks and Missionary Bishops, is a
witness to the Greek Church (which who shall gainsay?) that she is a true
member of the One Body. The Patriarch of Constantinople exercised that
charge which the Council of Chalcedon gave him, and ordained Bishops among
the barbarians, and the Spirit of God blessed their labours, and the whole
North became his spiritual offspring. Rome cannot show, since she has been
divided from the East, a conversion on so large a scale, so complete, so
permanent. And on that great mass she has hitherto made no impression. It
is a complete refutation of her claim to be _by herself_ Catholic, that
there exists out of her communion a Body of Apostolic descent and