The Church is more powerful than the Tsardom; but nowadays the Tsar rules the Church.
The ancient Tsars bowed to the ground before the patriarch; now the occupant of the Patriarchal throne signs himself in his letters to the Tsar, thus: “Your Majesty’s slave and footstool, your humble Stephen, the little Shepherd of Riazan!” The head of the Church the Tsar’s footstool!
Demetrius, the Metropolitan of Rostov, was a very saintly man; when the author of my being made him drink Hungarian wine, and began questioning him on clerical affairs, the saintly old man did not answer at all, but silently and repeatedly blessed the Tsar with the sign of the holy cross, and thus he succeeded in escaping.
The priests say, “It is impossible to swim against the stream; the whip cannot break the axe.”
But the martyrs for the sake of the faith did not spare their lives!
The Tsar keeps his table for the bishops. “He whose bread I eat, his man I am.”