036 The Greek Chimli. [Dkc 



Greek deputies wei'e introduced. The Romish doctrines were proposed. 

 The Greeks had been instructed to make the alliance, cost what it would. 

 They acceded to every thing, — discovered, with true diplomatic ease, that 

 the disputes between the churches were disputes about words, — declared 

 the agreement perfect, — and returned to communicate their discovery, 

 and be received with universal contumely by their indignant countrymen. 

 The negotiation perished. The Turks returned to the siege. Constan- 

 tinople was stormed, and the haughty and profligate Church of Greece 

 ■was stripped of its honours, and turned into the slave of the infidel. 



We are told by Gibbon that the fall of the Greek capital came like a 

 flash of lightning upon the Christian kingdoms. It at once dazzled, 

 surprised, and terrified them. It revealed, for the first time, the actual 

 strength of that extraordinary government, which had been raised, as if 

 for the palpable purpose of punishing the old corruptions of the Greek 

 empire, and whose fierce and incalculable force might so suddenly pour 

 across the limits of its new conquest, and revenge the Crusades. The 

 Pope, as the assumed head of Christendom, took the lead in the deter- 

 mination to oppose an iron barrier to this flood of living strength. But 

 he had subtler contrivances than the instruments of flesh and blood. 

 He laboured to reduce the Greek patriarchs to fight the battles of his 

 cause. 



The spirit of the Greeks had been crushed by the Turkish conquest. 

 The patriarchs had lost the consciousness of supremacy, and thej-^ readily 

 embraced the offers of Rome. In the space of less than half a century 

 from the storm of their city, thirteen patriarchs acknowledged tlie 

 supremacy of the pontiff. This supremacy, but doubtfully acknow;ledged 

 by the people, and sometimes totally abjured by the patriarchsr was at 

 length openly assailed by the great leaders of the German reformation. 

 It is unquestionable that their doctrines produced the effect of retarding 

 the advance of the popish domination. But the difficulty of possessing 

 the Scriptures, that two-edged sword with which alone the progress of 

 Christianity can be a triumph, the abject state of the people under the 

 Turks, their habitual cori-uption, and the resistless arts of Rome, 

 prevented the Reformation from more than throwing a brief light on 

 the national mi.;d. 



The Protestantism of Cyril Lucar, the patriarch of Constantinople, 

 in the early part of the seventeenth century, W'as even less defined than 

 the popery of Cyril of Beraea, his successor. They both met with the 

 same fate, from the hand of the same tyranny, — they were both 

 strangled ; and left nothing to their countrymen but the memory of a 

 religious controversy, for which the nation was too indolent to care, 

 even if it had not been too ignorant to comprehend. But by a curious 

 coincidence, the Greek Church too had its Council of Trent ; its deciding, 

 absolute, and pacifying council, which settled all disputes past, present, 

 and to come, by tlie simple contrivance of— commanding that every man 

 should be of its opinion ! 



This was the synod held in Jerusalem in 1672, for the three purposes, 

 of reprobating the German reformers, of annulling the " Confession," or 

 system of doctrine delivered by Lucaris, and of giving validity to the 

 " confession" of his antagonist Dositheus. The intestine controversies of 

 the church were put to silence by this formal declaration. For, to the 

 priesthood further controversy would have assumed the character of 

 revolt against superior authority, and the priesthood were at once too 



