The election was, however, not ratified by the head patriarch of Constantinople on account of the doctrines held by the new patriarch on the subject of the Holy Spirit. Karolus maintained, in contradiction to the established doctrine of the Orthodox Eastern Church, that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, as is asserted by the Roman Catholic Church. On a closer inquiry into the religious tenets of the elect of Damascus, it was discovered that his opinions were heretical also on other points, for he was found to entertain a very favourable bias towards the doctrine of purgatory, and also of works of supererogation. In consequence, the patriarch of Constantinople dispatched to Damascus a more trustworthy follower to fill the vacant post.
While the dispute was still pending, Karolus had been indefatigably working to increase the numbers of his own adherents; and the see of Rome, but too glad
to have so eligible an opportunity of adding to its influence in a quarter where all its former efforts had been in vain, immediately despatched some of its cleverest emissaries to Karolus for the purpose of inducing him not to give way in the dispute, and promising him the support of the Pope.
These emissaries were but too successful. What their arguments could not effect, they obtained by money and promises. Amongst other things, they held out hopes to Karolus of preferment in the Romish Church, and finally their influence prevailed over the advice, the entreaties, and the solemn admonition of the chief patriarch of Constantinople. Karolus entered the Church of Rome, humbly and submissively acknowledging the authority of the Pope, by whom he was created bishop of Antioch. Since then all the well-known energies of the Romish propaganda, all the wealth, the influence, the tactics of that unscrupulous power have been used with great effect to increase the number of dissenters from the Orthodox Eastern Church.
In this case, there may be found additional evidence of the unscrupulousness of the chief agents of the authorities at Rome. Though it is the law of that Church, and one that is most strictly enforced, that Roman Catholic priests shall live in perpetual celibacy, the Greek Roman Catholic priests, as the dissenters from the Orthodox Eastern Church are called, are permitted to marry, and they are further allowed to retain the rites of the Church from which they have deserted. Perhaps these anomalies have been purposely continued in order to facilitate the perversion of the faithful adherents of the Orthodox Eastern Church by inducing the belief, that the two Churches are identical.
Like the parent Church, that of the Greek Roman
Catholics is scattered throughout Syria, but its adherents reside chiefly in the plains; their numbers may be computed at about sixty thousand. It was most successful in making proselytes while Syria was under the Egyptian rule; at which period the government seemed to make it a point to place in positions of trust and emolument chiefly such persons as acknowledged the authority of the Pope of Rome.
It must not be supposed, that this preference was the result of a peculiar partiality on the part of the pachas for the Roman Catholic religion; for it has been tolerably well ascertained, that this favourable bias was the result of the direct mediation of the Sacred College at Rome, whose members, it may be imagined, rendered some equivalent service to the Egyptian government.
It is not many years since Baachery Bey, a member of the divan in Damascus, of the same faith, procured from Maximius, the patriarch of the Greek Roman Catholics, permission to erect a Church in that city; and with it the still higher authority of Mehemet Ali, who ordered the church to be built without giving the petitioners the trouble of first obtaining a firman. This church is now one of the finest in Damascus, and is yet another of the records existing in Syria of the unscrupulousness exhibited by the Church of Rome in the selection of its agents.
In 1840, there arose a great dispute between the heterodox patriarch Maximius and the orthodox patriarch of Antioch, on the dress worn by the priests in the Greek Roman Catholic Church. The latter complained that the priests under the tutelage of his Romish opponent did not, in this respect, conform to the exact rules prescribed by the head of their own Church, but continued to wear one similar to that worn