# The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 2/Division 2/Chapter 1

DIVISION II
THE MODERN GREEK CHURCH
CHAPTER I
CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION
The fall of Constantinople was quickly followed by the subjugation of almost all the remnants of the Byzantine Empire, Even the Venetians and the Knights of St. John were swept from the Levant by the victorious Turks. The consequence was the subjection of the Greek Church to Mohammedan despotism. The sultan recognised the Church as a corporate institution, instituted and maintained official relations with the bishops, and issued specific regulations for the management of the Christians. The forcible conversion of the followers either of Jesus or of Moses, regarded as two prophets of Islam, was forbidden by the Koran. While obstinate idolaters were to be slain, Jews and Christians were to be allowed to live and practise their religious rites, though not to proselytise. But both were treated with contempt, subjected to specific exactions and disabilities, and often liable to unchecked abuse and outrage ​Christians were required to pay a capitation tax (called the haratsh), from which Mussulman inhabitants of the same provinces were exempt. But the most cruel and degrading burden laid upon them was the tribute of children which went to maintain the famous institution of the janissaries. A tithe of the young population, one boy in five, was demanded by the government. Every two or three years government officers went through the towns and villages selecting the healthiest and strongest boys to be trained for service as soldiers of the sultan. They were taken quite young, and carefully educated in Mohammedanism. The institution was a unique characteristic of the Ottoman Empire. It was originated by Orkhan, about the year 1329, but organised much more thoroughly by his son and successor Murad, who has therefore been generally regarded as its founder. By this means the sultans were able to maintain a strong fighting force unattached to the pashas and unaffected by local interests, a rigorously disciplined and highly trained standing army absolutely subject to the imperial authority.
This, then, was the secret of the power of the Ottoman Empire when at its zenith it boasted of ruling three continents. At the time of the fall of Constantinople the number of janissaries was 12,000; under Suleiman the Legislator it rose to 40,000. But in later times these janissaries themselves became a menace to the weakened central authority, exercising their power for their common interests like the Roman armies under the feebler emperors. In the year 1566 they obtained from Selim ii. the right to make recruits of their own children. Thus they became a self-contained caste. At last the decline of the Greek population of the empire, which was the chief tax-producing element, rendered the serious drain upon it involved by the tribute of children disastrous to the finances of the State. At the same time the growing turbulence of the janissaries made them a constant source of anxiety to their master.
During the reign of Mohammed iv. (a.d. 1649-1687) ​this unnatural method of recruiting the army came to an end. The last recorded case occurred in the year 1676. Meanwhile its long continuance was a proof of the abject degradation of the people who endured it for centuries. Not only was it a cruel outrage on the family; it was a barefaced insult to Christianity, since it was an organised instrument of apostasy. How came the Greeks to bow their necks to the humiliating yoke, instead of preferring death to the dishonour of it? In other respects their peaceful submission to the Ottoman rule is not surprising. This rule was not always harsh. In the Turkish Empire the peasant was at least a free man, while in Christian countries at the same time he was a serf, subject to cruel feudal tyranny. Still, in spite of all that is unheroic in the attitude of the Greeks, it is to the credit of the Church that she held on her course through centuries of abuse and hardships; for all along the Christians were suffering from wrongs and miseries which they could easily have escaped by becoming converts to Islam. It is not to be supposed that none took this tempting course. The truth is, immense numbers did become Mohammedans. Manuel, the last of the Palæologi, joined the religion of the destroyer of his ancestors' throne. But these facts do not derogate from the stubborn fidelity of the multitudes who resisted the temptation to apostatise; on the contrary, they enhance the martyr-like character of it. The Greek Church has always gloried in her orthodoxy; she has more reason to be proud of her very existence, more ground for congratulation in the fact that she has not been worn down by the continuous friction of centuries of abuse and contempt.
Unhappily little can be said to the credit of the highest officials of the Church during these desolate ages. For the most part the simple peasants who clung to their faith did so against all inducements to abandon it. The case of their superiors presents a grim contrast to this unworldly fidelity. The patriarchs of Constantinople were now chosen and appointed by the sultan, although the fiction of a synodical election was more or less ostentatiously preserved; and they ​generally proved to be pliant instruments in the hands of the government. That is not very surprising, since they were selected with this end in view. They commonly obtained the post by bribery and held it by sycophancy. Thus the Church was confronted with the unedifying spectacle of her chief priest cringing before the infidel. In return for his subserviency the patriarch of Constantinople was allowed to summon synods and to hold courts, not only for ecclesiastical, but even for civil cases, among his own people.
The patriarchs were frequently deposed by the sultans quite arbitrarily, and they often bought their places back again; but some fell into perpetual disgrace, and some were strangled. At one time there were fourteen patriarchs in fifteen years. Some of the patriarchs were of notoriously degraded character. The patriarch Raphael was said to have been a confirmed drunkard ignorant of Greek.
Following the example in high places, bishops bought their positions, and were used by the government as magistrates and tax-gatherers. The orthodox patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem were very differently situated. These chief pastors were still elected by synods of local bishops as in older, happier times. But they had very little power, most of the Christian inhabitants of their provinces being heretics out of communion with their church. The one patriarch who exercised effective control over the Greek Church was regarded by patriotic Greeks themselves as a renegade and a traitor to their cause.
​A melancholy characteristic of the depression and degeneration of the later Greek Church is the absence of conspicuous names from its dismal history. If there were any village Hampdens or Miltons, the former started no successful rebellions and the latter were mute and inglorious. During outbreaks of popular fanaticism, and under the cold, calculating persecutions instigated by the government from time to time in opposition to its professed policy, no doubt the noble army of martyrs was enriched by the addition of many a humble hero of the faith. But either the ability or the opportunity for any conspicuous feat of fidelity was lacking. The story of the Church had left the noble highlands where striking landmarks rivet our attention and descended to a featureless plain with the monotony of the desert. There was more learning silently cherished in the monasteries than is commonly supposed, and a higher standing of education was maintained among the Greeks than among most of their contemporaries in Europe. Moreover, Greek merchants grew rich in spite of fiscal disabilities. But there was no intellectual originality, no literature of genius, no movement of distinction. In all this barren age there is just one name that has emerged out of the fog of oblivion into European fame, and that largely owing to the accident of Western connections. This is the name of Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Alexandria, and subsequently of Constantinople, who lived at the time of the Reformation, and became the courageous author of an abortive attempt to introduce the principles of Protestantism into the East.
The Greek Church came into contact with Lutheranism under the patriarchs Joseph ii. and Jeremiah ii., and later with Calvinism by means of the activity of Cyril Lucar. In the year 1559, Melanchthon, taking advantage of the return of Demetrius, a deacon of Constantinople who had been staying at Wittenburg, sent a copy of the Augsburg confession to the patriarch Joseph, claiming agreement between its tenets and the doctrines of the Eastern Church. It was received in chill silence, the prosaic interpretation ​of which may be that since it only existed in Latin and German—languages not studied at Constantinople—the patriarch did not put himself to the trouble of getting his deacon to explain it to him. Fifteen years later (a.d. 1574), Martin Crusius produced a Greek version of the confession and sent it to Jeremiah ii., who was then the patriarch of Constantinople, and received in return a polite reply. Thus encouraged, Crusius proceeded to point out how Lutheranism differed from Romanism and to express a hope of union with the Eastern Church. Jeremiah's reply is uncompromising. The only way to union with the orthodox Church is to "follow the apostolical and synodical decrees." There can be no broadening out of a common basis of union; the sole possibility is conversion to the Greek Church and admission into that communion as it now stands in its changeless rigour of doctrine and discipline. In the year 1578, Jeremiah received a fuller account of Lutheranism; but nothing came of any of these Lutheran overtures.
Cyril's action was on different lines. It was at once less ambitious and more courageous. He knew the Greek Church too well to ignore its errors or imagine that in its present condition any fusion with a Protestant Church -was either practicable or desirable. His aim was a reformation within the Eastern Church on Calvinistic lines—not the High Church idea of the reunion of Christendom, but the Protestant conception of a true gospel and a pure Church.
Cyril Lucar was born at Candia, the chief town of Crete, in the year 1572. The island was then under the mild rule of the Venetians, who allowed more religious liberty than any other power. Several Greeks of interest in the movements of this time came from Crete. But Cyril was sent to Alexandria at the early age of ten, and there put under the tuition of his uncle Meletius Pega—another Cretan—who had been in Italy and seen enough there to return with strong anti-Roman convictions. Before he was twelve years old the lad was sent to Venice, and thence to Padua, where he came under the influence of an ​anti-Roman teacher Maximus, afterwards bishop of Cerigo. Subsequently he travelled in Germany and Switzerland, perhaps also in England during the reign of Elizabeth, though that is doubtful. In the year 1595 he returned to Alexandria and was ordained a deacon. During this period of his life we find him for a time at Constantinople, though on what business nobody knows. The Greeks having held a conference at Wilna with several Lutheran nobles and divines to seek a basis of union between the two communions, although with no results, Sigismund, the king of Poland, an energetic champion of the papacy, forbade the propagation of Greek Church doctrines in his dominions under severe penalties. Meletius then sent Cyril to Poland on behalf of the cause of the Eastern Church, and he settled down in Wilna for a time, supporting himself by teaching the Greek language. He was now like an ambassador from the Greek Church, an intermediary between Poland and the East. The king of Poland sent him to Meletius, exhorting the patriarch to revere the primacy of St. Peter and acknowledge the pope. Meletius returned a respectful but negative reply, and at the same time formally appointed Cyril his exarch in Sclavonia. Meanwhile Sigismund began to persecute in the interest of the Uniats—the party in favour of uniting the Greek Church with Rome on the Roman terms. Necessarily Cyril had to "lie low" if he would remain in Poland while this tempest was sweeping over the country. But there is no evidence that he yielded any more than by keeping silence. At a later time his bitter enemy the Jesuit Sarga circulated a report to the effect that he had written a letter to the archbishop of Löwenberg professing his adherence to the Church of Rome. The letter was a forgery and the accusation based upon it a barefaced calumny.
On his return to Alexandria Cyril was sent to his native island, to collect the usual contributions for the patriarchate. In the year 1602 he succeeded Meletius as orthodox patriarch of Alexandria. While he was in this ​office the English king, James i., offered him free education for a Greek whom he might send over for the purpose. The fortunate recipient of this favour was Metrophanes Critopulus, who sadly disappointed his patrons by his extravagance and pretentiousness. Probably he was a clever if not a high-principled young man. In Germany the Lutherans assign to his authorship, "A Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East." On his return to Egypt he became a metropolitan, and he ultimately attained to the patriarchate of Alexandria—of course, like Cyril, for the "orthodox" Greek Church there. The bulk of the Egyptians were of the Monophysite Coptic Church.
Cyril opened up a correspondence with Archbishop Laud, whom he presented with an Arabic Pentateuch "as a sign of brotherly love"; this is now preserved in Oxford, at the Bodleian Library. When on his travels he had secured a fifth century manuscript of the Scriptures at Mount Athos. This was the oldest accessible Greek Bible, the two older manuscripts which scholars now use being as yet unknown—namely, the Vatican, locked up in the pope's library, and the Sinaitic, lying undiscovered in the monastery of St. Catherine. All English students have reason to think of the name of Cyril Lucar with gratitude, for he presented his precious manuscript to the English nation in the person of King Charles i. It now lies open to view under a glass case in the King's Library at the British Museum—one of the most valuable of all the valuable treasures owned by Great Britain. We know it as the Alexandrian manuscript, not like the Sinaitic as named after the place where it was found, nor because it represents the Alexandrian text—which is the text of the Vatican and the Sinaitic manuscripts—but simply because its donor was the patriarch of Alexandria, so that it came to England immediately from that city.
Cyril commenced his reforming efforts in the Greek Church while at Alexandria. In the year 1621 he became patriarch of Constantinople, where he still laboured in the ​interest of the Reformation. He was succeeded at Alexandria by Gerasius, another Cretan, but a staunch upholder of old-fashioned Greek orthodoxy.
Cyril drew up a Confession of Faith, a perusal of which makes it clear that he had strong leanings towards Calvinism. But how far he went in this direction has been a matter of dispute. His friends of the orthodox Church, and also English High Churchmen anxious for union with the Greek Church, have endeavoured to minimise his Protestanism when they have not thrown over Cyril in despair as a heretic. It is necessary, therefore, to have some of his statements before us in their exact phraseology if we would judge for ourselves where he stands. He begins with an affirmation of the Trinity—with respect to which all the leading reformers were agreed; but he affirms the Greek doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father by the Son. Article iii. is as follows: "We believe that God, before the foundation of the world, predestinated His elect to glory without respect of their working, and that there was none other cause which impelled Him to this election than His good pleasure and Divine mercy; in like manner that before the foundation of the world He reprobated whom He would reprobate; of which reprobation, if a man will regard the absolute right and sovereignty of God, he will without doubt find the cause to be the will of God; but if again he regards the laws and rules of good order which the Divine will employs for the government of the world, he will find it to be justice, for God is long-suffering, but yet just." Here we have the full, unqualified Calvinistic doctrine of election, including reprobation, logically supra-lapsarian, though the final clause seems to introduce a qualification by insisting on justice, but that only dogmatically without any attempt at a reconciliation with the earlier statement. The confession decidedly affirms baptismal regeneration—in which it agrees with the majority of the reformers. It declares that Christ alone "does the work of a true and proper Mediator"—a phrase which by its defining attributes "true and ​proper" has been said not to exclude the secondary intercession of saints.
Article ix. is as follows: "We believe that none can be saved without faith. By faith we mean that which justifies in Jesus Christ, which the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ produced for us, and which the gospel preaches, and without which it is impossible to please God."
In treating of the doctrine of the Church, Cyril says: "The Church which is called Catholic containeth all the faithful in Christ," etc. Then he proceeds, "There are particular visible churches," etc. In Article xii. he distinctly affirms that the Church can err—a statement as abhorrent to an orthodox Greek as to a Roman Catholic. Article xiii. declares that, "We believe that man is justified by faith, without works. But when we speak of faith we mean the correlative of faith, which is the righteousness of Christ on which faith takes hold," etc.
If this is not Protestanism, what is Protestantism? It is not even Melanchthon's mild and tempered synergism; it is nearer to Calvinism than to Lutheranism. On the great dividing question, the fundamental question of the final authority, Cyril is decidedly Protestant. He says, "The authority of Holy Scripture is far greater than that of the Church, for it is a different thing to be taught by the Holy Spirit from being taught by man. Man may through ignorance err and deceive, and be deceived. But the Holy Spirit neither deceiveth nor is deceived, nor is subject to error, but is infallible." This reminds us of Chillingworth's doctrine—"The Bible the religion of Protestants."
In June 1627, Nicodemus Mentaxa, a native of Cephalonia and a monk, who had been to England, arrived at Constantinople with a printing press and a fount of Greek types. The English ambassador housed them; but the Jesuits tried to gain over Mentaxa. They plied him with threats; and at length they accused him of treason because he printed the royal arms of England at the beginning and end of his book. Mentaxa began the printing of Cyril's ​confession, but the Jesuits broke in and seized the types. Cyril then sent the document to Geneva, where the confession was printed in a Latin version. The publication of it created a sensation in Europe. Here was the first ecclesiastic in the Greek Church professing the most thorough-going Protestant tenets, even echoing arrant Calvinism! Most people took the document for a forgery. Then Cyril issued a new edition of the confession, this time in Greek, and with significant additions. He declared that the faithful ought to read the Holy Scriptures. The doctrines necessary to be believed, he said, may be discovered for themselves by regenerate persons, the Holy Spirit aiding them, and Scripture being compared with Scripture—most outspoken Protestantism again, and that on its basal principle and central point of difference from the Church, the question of the source of authority in doctrine! On the other hand, Cyril says nothing about the authority of the Church. He adds an expression of his detestation of the adoration of images—practically the chief popular religious function in his own Church.
Cyril did not find his patriarchate a bed of roses. No patriarch could have been at his ease in the office under the anomalous circumstances, but a reformer amidst stereotyped Eastern orthodoxy and papal intrigue was doubly threatened in this post of danger. The Greeks, however, did not at first trouble themselves to interfere with their patriarch, and it was by the machinations of his most deadly enemies, the Jesuits, that he was molested. Cyril issued a pastoral calling upon the faithful to withdraw from communion with all members of the Latin Church. But he had not the authority to maintain his policy. Five times he was banished; and five times he was restored to his office. He was fortunate in having for his friend the grand vizier, who was not to be deceived by the lies that were circulated about him. At last his enemies found their chance. The Sultan Amurath was absent from Constantiniople and marching to Bagdad, when the Jesuits contrived to get a message sent to him informing ​him that Cyril was carrying on treasonable correspondence with the Cossacks. Anxious in the prospect of war, unable to investigate the charge at a distance, in hasty anger, Amurath ordered the patriarch to be executed. Cyril was strangled with a bow-string, and his body flung into the sea, on the 27th of June, 1638, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and the thirty-sixth of his two patriarchates. Some fishermen found the body, and it was buried at night on an island in the bay of Nicomedia.
Professor Kyriakos considers that Cyril Lucar "must be numbered among the first scholars of his time." Whether he should be admitted to that position in an era of encyclopaedic learning among the men of the new enlightenment in Germany may be doubted. But there can be no doubt that in the East he stood absolutely alone, the one brilliant star of his age. Better than that, he aimed at a genuine reformation, although this was on lines of Western theology for which his people were in no way prepared. It would be preposterous to look for reform of the Greek Church by means of its conversion to Calvinism.
Cyril was followed in the patriarchate of Constantinople by his namesake at Berœa, who summoned a synod within three months of his predecessor's death. This synod anathematised the confession and also Cyril Lucar, betraying no doubt that he was its author. It affirmed the duty of Christian priests to repress all heresy to the utmost of their power. Cyril Lucar was described as "an intruder into the throne of Constantinople, abounding with the poison of the deadliest heresy"; he was especially condemned for teaching "that the bread offered at the altar and also the wine are not changed by the blessing of the priest and the descent of the Holy Spirit into the real body and blood of Christ"; and anathematised as an "Iconoclast" and "worse than an Iconoclast." The decrees of the synod were signed by the three patriarchs, including Metrophanes of Alexandria, who had owed so much to the murdered patriarch—an instance of base ingratitude.
​In the year 1642 another synod took a significant course. It condemned Cyril's confession and Calvinism together, thus plainly showing that the hishops perceived the connection between them; this synod did not name Cyril as the author of the obnoxious document. But in the synod of Jassy in Moldavia, which was held a little later, this confession was again attributed to Cyril. Among the bishops assembled at Jassy was Peter Mogila, the Russian ecclesiastic, who issued a counterblast in the form of another confession of faith which came to be accepted as a standard test of orthodoxy. It was not till thirty-four years after Cyril's death that a public official denial of his authorship of the confession that bears his name, was put forth. This was at the famous synod of Bethlehem, which Dositheus, the patriarch of Jerusalem—himself a Cretan—took the opportunity of the dedication of the new church in the year 1672 to gather together there. The synod condemned the Calvinistic confession and denied that Cyril Lucar was its author, A patriarch of Constantinople emitting such poison! The idea was too horrible! It could not be so! We can appreciate the psychological attitude. But in view of sober historical criticism, can we attach any real value to this repudiation? The further back we go, the closer and surer is Cyril's connection with the confession. A late denial of it to which the policy of convenience strongly urged has no weight whatever. ​In opposition to the anathematised confession the council endorsed Peter Mogila's confession. That was thoroughly Oriental. But this council in its antagonism to Calvinism went further and leaned towards Rome. It adopted a modified doctrine of purgatory, declaring that a certain period of suffering in Hades would be assigned to "those who had begun to repent, but who had not brought forth works meet for repentance." The synod of Bethlehem in a small way corresponds in the Greek Church to the council of Trent in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a deliberate condemnation of the Reformation and re-endorsement of the old teaching and practice.
Although Cyril's attempt to originate a reformation in the Greek Church had ended in failure, this fact must not be set down to the brave man's discredit. He had not displayed any intellectual originality; he had not developed reformed doctrine from within his Church; he had only tried to transplant an exotic, and it is not surprising that this would not take root in a strange soil. The Reformation in England was not indigenous. It too was a foreign importation, first from Wittenberg, then from Geneva. But the case of the remote Eastern Church is very different. Greek thought had been rarely much interested in movements of the Western mind. It was hardly touched by the Novatian and Donatist schisms, and but slightly affected by the great Pelagian controversy. We should not have expected therefore that it would ​have been much moved by such a thoroughly Western agitation as that of the Reformation. But this is not all. The times were not ripe. In the East there had been no renaissance, no intellectual awakening as in the West. There had been no precursors of a reformation such as the German mystics, no stirring of conscience, no hunger and thirst for better things. The world needs "the man and the hour." Perhaps Cyril was not the man; he had neither Luther's passionate energy nor Calvin's masterful will. But if he had possessed both qualities he would have failed because the hour had not sounded. The blow may be struck; but there will be no explosion if the dynamite is not ready. The Greek Church was still in the patristic period. It had not advanced beyond John of Damascus. To Eastern Christendom, the new age, when, as the enthusiastic Ulric von Hutten declared, "it is a joy to live," had not arrived. Will this ever arrive?
There is one fact of a more specific character that must not be left out of account when we consider the heroic career of Cyril and his ultimate failure. Whatever views we may hold with regard to the question of an establishment of religion and the right relations of Church and State, we must perceive the anomaly of the Greek situation. For a Christian Church to be officially connected with a Mohammedan government could not but be an unholy alliance. When Cyril accepted the position of patriarch of Constantinople he put himself in a false position. In one way he gained freedom for his attempted innovations. The Ottoman government was more tolerant than most Christian governments of his time. While Spain burnt its heretics, the sultan was magnanimously indifferent to the quarrels among his Christian subjects, or perhaps he was ready to welcome them as weakening the power of the rival of Islam. At all events, as the officially recognised head of the Church owing his appointment to the sultan, Cyril could pursue his own policy with a large measure of independence. But he paid a dear price for that ​independence. In proportion as he stood aloof from the Greeks, sheltered by Turkish patronage, he lost influence over his compatriots. His official position neutralised his religious mission. He was bound to fail for the reason that "no man can serve two masters."
Before passing from this disappointing passage of history, it may be convenient to glance at a later approach to the Eastern Church from the West, in the quaint action of the English non-jurors. Most people will now consider these worthy men to have been quite wrong-headed. A little knot of conscientious passive-resisters" to the settlement under William and Mary, they contained some of the saintliest souls in the Church of England, among others Bishop Ken, the author of well-known morning and evening hymns. No one can doubt their sincere conscientiousness or their deep piety. Now it happened in the year 1713 that Arsenius the archbishop of Thebais was in England on one of those many humiliating begging expeditions to which the representatives of the Greek Church were repeatedly driven by the penury of their flock. Here he came in contact with the non-jurors, and this led them to open a correspondence with the Eastern patriarch through Peter the Great, then at the height of his power in Russia. In the year 1717 they asked the tsar to send their proposals to the patriarchs, as from "the Catholic remnant of the British Churches." It would seem that neither Peter nor the Eastern prelates at first suspected the isolated position of the non-jurors or their comparative insignificance. Indeed, so obscure was the movement on the English side, that it was not till after some years that news of it reached Archbishop Wade. Immediately he learnt what was going on—which was in the year 1724—he wrote to Chrysanthus, the patriarch of Jerusalem, exposing the true position of affairs. This pricked the bubble. The non-juror's dream was shattered in a moment.
* ↑ See Kyriakos, p. 9 ff.
* ↑ Professor Kyriakos states that the patriarch of Constantinople not only did not lose power under the Turkish government, but even increased his privileges (Geschichte, p. 26). This is a most misleading statement. Certainly in external form and range of influence such was the case, and that in two ways—(1) This patriarch was now set over all the orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, including those of the other three patriarchates—the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, of course only those of the orthodox Church, now known locally as Melchite. (2) To his ecclesiastical authority was added civil jurisdiction. On the other hand, he could not call his life his own if in any matter he offended his despotic master. Moreover, what he gained in civil power was more than counterbalanced by what he lost in spiritual influence, as the nominee and officer of the hated Moslem power.
* ↑ See Neale, Patriarch of Alexandria, vol. ii. p. 360.
* ↑ Geschichte, p. 145.
* ↑ Moreover, there is plenty of collateral evidence showing that the confession was quite in accordance with Cyril's views expressed elsewhere, and demonstrating his essential Protestantism. Thus he writes to the archbishop of Spalatro, in the year 1618, stating that for three years he has compared the doctrine of the Greek and Latin Churches with that of the Reformed, and adding as the result of this prolonged study, "I left the Fathers and took for my guide Scripture and the analogy of faith alone. At length, through the grace of God, because I discovered that the cause of the reformers was the more just and the more in accordance with the doctrine of Christ, I embraced it." What could be more explicit than that? He continues, "I can no longer endure to hear a man say that the comments of human tradition are of equal weight with Holy Scripture." Then he states with approval the Calvinistic doctrine of original sin. He professes to affirm what he calls "the Greek doctrine of the sacraments"; but he repudiates the "chimera of transubstantiation." It must be remembered that the Greeks had never worked out a metaphysical theory of the transmutation of the elements as the Latins had done, and had never accepted the Roman Catholic theory of essence and accidents, leaving the subject a mystery. But their doctrine was practically the same as the Roman doctrine, which indeed first appeared in the East, most distinctly, for instance, in Gregory of Nyssa. Now Cyril denies it. He asserts that only the faithful participate—a Calvinistic idea going even beyond Luther, who held that the unworthy do receive the body of Christ, but to their hurt, and certainly as foreign to the Greek as to the Latin Church. Then Cyril goes on to denounce the popular cult of icons. "As to image worship," he writes, "it is impossible to say how pernicious under present circumstances it is." He also pronounces against the invocation of saints—all Protestant and some of them advanced Calvinistic declarations.