ofoundly studied
the Alexandrian fathers. Patristic reading, which no one could yet
neglect who advanced the smallest pretensions to theological
acquirements, might naturally lead men to think with longing of an ideal
of united faith 'professed' (to use Bishop Ken's familiar words) 'by the
whole Church before the disunion of East and West.'[135] Missionary
feeling, which at the beginning of the eighteenth century was showing so
many signs of nascent activity, had not failed to take notice of the
gross ignorance into which many parts of Greek Christendom had
fallen.[136] Henry Ludolph, a German by birth, and late secretary to
Prince George of Denmark, on his return to London in 1694 from some
lengthened travels in Russia, and after further wanderings a few years
later in Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land, persuaded some English
Churchmen to publish an impression of the New Testament in modern Greek,
which was dispersed in those countries through the Greeks with whom
Ludolph kept up a correspondence.[137] In 1701 University men at
Cambridge, when Bentley was Vice-Chancellor, were much interested by the
visit of Neophytos, Archbishop of Philippopolis, and Exarch of Thrace.
He was presented with a Doctor of Divinity's degree, and afterwards made
a speech in Hellenistic Greek.[138] About the same time the minutes of
the Christian Knowledge Society make report of a Catechism drawn up for
Greek Churchmen by Bishop Williams of Chichester, and translated from
the English by some Greeks then studying at Oxford.[139] This little
colony of Greek students had been established in 1689, through the
cordial relations then subsisting between Archbishop Sancroft and
Georgirenes, Metropolitan of Samos, who had recently been a refugee in
London. It was hoped that by their residence at Oxford they would be
able to promote in their own country a better understanding of 'the true
doctrine of the Church of England.' They were to be twenty in number,
were to dwell together at Gloucester Hall (afterwards Worcester
College), be habited all alike in the gravest sort of habit worn in
their own country, and stay at the University for five years.[140]
Robert Nelson, ever zealous and energetic in all the business of the
society, would naturally feel particularly interested in the condition
of Eastern Christians on account of the business connection with Smyrna
in which his family had been prosperously engaged. We are told of his
showing warm sympath