Theodosius, the heresiarch, and his crew have openly begun to wage war against the Church; they abolish fasts, they treat confession and self-immolation as nonsense; they ridicule celibacy, self-imposed poverty, and change other strait and narrow ways of the Christian life into the smooth broad ways which lead to eternal damnation. They fearlessly teach a debauched self-indulgent life; they recognise no sin, everything is holy, and by their teaching they have brought the children of the world into such fearless voluptuousness, that many take up the mere Epicurean attitude: “Eat, drink, and be merry. There is no account to render after death.”
They call the holy icons idols, the church singing bulls’ roaring. They destroy chapels, and where the walls have remained, they allow tobacco and barbers’ shops to be opened. They take miracle-working icons away on stinking dung carts under dirty mats, thus insolently defiling them before the people. In this way they attack the Orthodox faith, under the pretext that it is not Christianity, but only useless and harmful superstitions which they are trying to uproot. What a number of clergy have been destroyed, unfrocked and tortured under this pretext! If you ask for a reason, the only answer you get is: they were superstitious, bigots, sanctimonious humbugs! He who keeps fast is a bigot; he who prays, sanctimonious; he who adores the icons, invariably (they say) a hypocrite.
All this is done with such cunning, and the intention both to exterminate the Orthodox clergy in Russia, and to introduce their newly invented Lutheran and Calvinistic, priestless sects.
He is truly mad who does not detect in them the atheistic spirit.
The church bells have been altered, they no longer chime, but tinkle as if sounding an alarm. And everything else is changed, the icons are painted, not on wood but on canvas, after foreign models; for instance, the image of Emmanuel the Saviour is quite like a German, fat, as if conceived in the flesh; the fleshy type is preferred, the celestial nature is ignored. The churches are no longer built after the ancient style, but with pointed towers like those in Germany, and the chimes even imitate Lutheran organs.
Poor Russia! Why dost thou set thy heart on German ways and actions?
There are to be no more monasteries; a decree is being prepared which will prohibit the taking of fresh vows; retired soldiers will fill the vacancies in the monasteries. It is written “He who comes to me I will in no wise cast out;” but they consider the scriptures as nothing.