In the year 1709, during the celebrations of the Poltava victory, the clergy erected on the Red Square in Moscow an imitation of a Roman temple with an altar, consecrating it to the virtues of the Russian god Apollo and Mars, that is in honour of the author of my being, and over the ancient temple ran the inscription:—“Basis et fundamentum reipublicae, religio.”
But what religion? Faith in what God, or gods?
There was also represented an “Apotheosis of the Russian Hercules,” that is, the author of my days slaying many animals and peoples, and, at the end of these feats, being borne up to heaven in Jove’s chariot, drawn by eagles along the Milky Way, with the inscription:—“Viamque affectat Olympo.”
In the pamphlet, written by the arch-monk Joseph, the Prefect of the Academy, the Apotheosis is described in the following words: “It should be known that this is neither a church, nor a sanctuary built to a saint, but a political or civil ceremony.”
Theodosius is trying to persuade my father to insert in the decree, which ordained the holy Synod, or in the Russian oath of allegiance itself, words declaring that, “The people should honour their ruler’s name as head and father of their country equally with the name of Jesus Christ.”
Men want to usurp God’s glory and the honour due to Christ, the Eternal and only King of kings. It is in the Roman Laws that these impious sacrilegious words are found: “The Roman autocrat is the Lord of the Universe.”
We confess and believe that Christ alone is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and there is no man Lord beside him.