“But if it be a just ground for retaining a practice in the Christian church, because it was enjoined to the Jews, what will our Catholic say for those usages which were actually prohibited to the Jews, and never practised by any but by the heathens and papists? All the Egyptian priests, as Herodotus informs us, had their heads shaved, and kept continually bald.[97] Thus the Emperor Commodus, that [pg 156] he might be admitted into that order, got himself shaved, and carried the god Anubis in procession. And it was on this account, most probably, that the Jewish priests were commanded not to shave their heads, nor to make any baldness upon them.—(Lev. xxi. 5; Ezek. xliv. 20). Yet this Pagan rasure, or tonsure, as they choose to call it, on the crown of the head, has long been the distinguishing mark of the Romish priesthood. It was on the same account, we may imagine, that the Jewish priests were forbidden to make any cuttings in their flesh (Lev. xix. 28, xxi. 5), since that was likewise the common practice of certain priests and devotees among the heathens, in order to acquire the fame of a more exalted sanctity. Yet the same discipline, as I have shown in my Letter,[98] is constantly practised at Rome in some of their solemn seasons and processions, in imitation of these Pagan enthusiasts, as if they searched the Scriptures to learn, not so much what was enjoined by true religion, as what had been useful at any time in a false one, to delude the multitude, and support an imposture.”—(Middleton's Miscellaneous Works, vol. v., p. 11, et seq.)
The same author justly observes, that “under the Pagan emperors the use of incense for any purpose of religion was thought so contrary to the obligations of Christianity, that in their persecutions, the [pg 157] very method of trying and converting a Christian was by requiring him only to throw the least grain of it into the censer or on the altar.”
“Under the Christian emperors, on the other hand, it was looked upon as a rite so peculiarly heathenish, that the very places or houses where it could be proved to have been done, were, by a law of Theodosius, confiscated to the government.”[99]—(Ibid., p. 95.)
I shall conclude this essay by a short sketch of the superstitious practices prevailing in the Græco-Russian Church, which will be the subject of my next and last chapter.
Chapter VIII. Image-Worship And Other Superstitious Practices Of The Graeco-Russian Church.
The Græco-Russian Church is perhaps the most important element of the politico-religious complications in which Europe is at present involved. It is, moreover, not a fortuitous cause of these complications, but has been growing during centuries, until it has reached its present magnitude, though its action upon Turkey may have been prematurely brought into play by accidental circumstances. It comprehends within its pale about 50,000,000 of souls, whilst it exercises an immense influence upon 13,000,000 of Turkish, and a considerable one upon more than 3,000,000 of Austrian subjects, professing the tenets of that church, though governed by separate hierarchies. To this number must be added the population of the kingdom of Greece, amounting to about 1,000,000: so that the whole of the followers of the Eastern Church may be computed in round numbers at 66,000,000 or 67,000,000 of souls.[100]
The Russian Church differs from other Greek churches, not in her tenets, but in her government. From the establishment of Christianity in Russia, towards the end of the tenth century, to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, the Russian Church was governed by a metropolitan, consecrated by the Patriarch of Constantinople. After this event, the metropolitans were consecrated by the Russian bishops till 1588, when a patriarch of Russia was instituted by that of Constantinople, who had arrived at Moscow, in order to obtain pecuniary assistance for his church. The patriarch enjoyed considerable influence, which modified in some respects the despotic authority of the Czar. It was Peter the Great who abolished this dignity in 1702, after the death of the Patriarch Adrian, and declared himself the head of the Russian Church.
He introduced several regulations to restrict the power of the clergy, and to improve their education. It appears that the violent reforms by which that monarch tried to introduce the civilization of western Europe amongst his subjects, had produced an intellectual movement in their church, but which, not squaring with the views of the imperial reformer, was violently suppressed by him. Thus, in 1713, a physician called Demetrius Tveritinoff, and some other persons, began to attack the worship of images, and to explain the sacrament of communion in the same sense as has been done by Calvin.