y in the wish of the Archbishop of Gotchau in
Armenia to get works of piety printed in that language.[141] Similar
interest would be felt by another leader of the early Nonjurors,
Frampton, Bishop of Gloucester, who in his earlier years had served as
chaplain at Aleppo, and had formed a familiar acquaintance with some of
the most learned patriarchs and bishops of the Eastern Church.[142] The
man, however, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century must have
done most to turn attention towards the Eastern Church, was Dr. Grabe,
who has been already more than once spoken of as held in great esteem by
the Nonjuring and High Church party. He had found the Anglican Church
more congenial to him on the whole than any other, but it shared his
sympathies with the Lutheran and the Greek. He was a constant daily
attendant at the English, and more especially the nonjuring services,
but for many years he communicated exclusively at the Greek Church. He
also published a 'Defensio Graecae Ecclesiae.'[143] Thus, in many different
ways, the Oriental Church had come to be regarded, especially by the
more studious of the High Church clergy, in quite another light from
that of Rome.

In 1716 Arsenius, Metropolitan of Thebais, came to London on a
charitable mission in behalf of the suffering Christians of Egypt. It
will be readily understood with what alacrity a number of the Scotch and
English Nonjurors seized the opportunity of making 'a proposal for a
concordat betwixt the orthodox and Catholic remnant of the British
Churches and the Catholic and Apostolic Oriental Church.' The
correspondence, of which a full account is given in Lathbury's History
of the Nonjurors,[144] although in many respects an interesting one, was
wholly abortive. There appears indeed to have been a real wish on the
part of Peter the Great and of some of the patriarchs to forward the
project; but the ecclesiastical synod of Russia was evidently not quite
clear from whom the overtures proceeded. Their answers were directed 'To
the Most Reverend the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Great Britain,
our dearest brothers,' and, somewhat to the dismay of the Nonjurors,
copies of the letters were even sent by the Patriarch of Jerusalem to
Archbishop Wake. Above all, the proposals were essentially one-sided.
The nonjuring bishops, while remaining perfectly faithful to their
principles, were willing to make large concessions in points which
involved no departure from wha