The Sun.
London, England, 1840-10-22 00:00:00

THE GREEK CHURCH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
SIR,—I take the liberty of suggesting to you the
propriety, before you make a positive assertion, to as-
certain the truth of it, because I think well enough of
yon to believe that you would not willingly and deli-
berately make such an utterly unfounded statement as
appears in your paper of this day, namely—that Roman
Catholic Christianity alone existed for upwards of fifteen
centuries. Sir, to that positive assertion I feel it, in
justice to myself and many millions of my co-religionists,
necessary to give an equally positive contradiction. I
am a member of the Church that was founded by St.
Paul in Corinth eighteen hundred years ago, a Church
which assuredly has never since ceased to exist, which
at this day numbers many millions of zealous votaries,
and has through the whole course of her glorious'history,
loathed and repudiated all communion with Rome and
her Christianity. Sir, neither Luther, Calvin, or the
Church of England ever protested more loudly against
the authority and tenets of the Bishop of Rome than
the Church to which I have the happiness to belong
has always done and ever will. Ido not think it rea-
sonable or decorous to attempt to occupy any portion of
your paper with a subject so unsuitable to it as a state-
ment of the many and important differences between
the Greek and the Roman Churches. Suffice it
then here to say that " by their fruits ye shall know
theni," and, accordingly, in the history of the former
Church you shall look in vain for any Albigensian cru-
sade, for any Inquisition, for a Bartholomew massacre,
or the still more horrible, because much longer conti-
nued, massacres that followed what is culled " the revo-
cation of the Edict of Nantes." It may appear strange
that a gentleman who writs so confidently on religious
matters as you do should need to be told this, but, Sir,
you see that, so it is.

Whether you will have the candour to do my insulted
Church the justice to publish this humble but honest vin
dieation of it, or content yourself with bucking this flat
contradiction to your monstrous mis-statement, I am,
Sir, with all the respect for you that you desert e,

A MEMBER OF THE GREEK CHURCH.

[We has® not the slightest inclination to burk our
Correspondent's ep'stle, and are willing to allow it to go
for what it is worth. Toe influence of Greek Chris-
tianity on civilization, the only point at issue, we
must leave our Correspondent to settle with the Roman
Catholics and Protestants, who both disapprove of its doc-
trines. We will only, in reply to what our Correspondent says
about persecution, remind him of the bloody feuds which
at an early period existed in the Greek Church ; if at
'a later period there have been none, let our Correspon-
dent remember that the majority of its congregations
have in general consisted of men in a state of slavery,
who are themselves the objects of persecution, without
an opportunity of showing by retaliation that they are
fully endued with the spirit of their persecutors. Per-
haps. too, our language which was too rigid, may have
other exceptions to it pointed out in three or four sects
of Christians, which have lived through 41 the slavery
of the cast, but without a particle of power to impress
on it a more civilized character.—En. Sun.]