with it,[1] must first make up their minds about the Council of Chalcedon. Reunion with the Copts is only possible if Anglicans turn Monophysite, or succeed in converting Copts to Chalcedon. This last case may be ruled out at once. To convert Copts to Chalcedon is just what Rome does; and they all denounce a Copt who abandons Monophysism as a renegade from his national Church. If all Copts abandoned the special teaching which constitutes their sect, that would mean the destruction of the very body which Anglicans call the Coptic Church. They all protest loudly that they do not want that.[2]
On the other hand, it is no doubt true that an unsophisticated Coptic priest, or even bishop, probably understands very little about the issue defended at Chalcedon. If you showed him a Catholic statement, and he did not know whence it came, it is quite likely that he would say it is correct. This only means that his knowledge of all theology is a negligible quantity.
The Copts do not, of course, say the Filioque in their creed. They do not seem to have considered the question;[3] but they would undoubtedly now describe it as a fresh Latin error, only adding a slightly darker shade to people who are already black with Chalcedonianism. Needless to say, they altogether reject the Pope's primacy and infallibility. To them, as to all schismatical Easterns, the Pope is a terrible danger, a mighty ogre who wants to swallow up pious Copts and turn them into Latins. Nor does the sight of the Uniate Copts give them any confidence.
- ↑ E.g. Mrs. Butcher: ii. 411. She understands so little of what Monophysism means that she calls ignoring it "to face the facts of the case."
- ↑ Dr. Neale, in spite of his prejudices and often childish diatribes, at least was clear on this point. He will have nothing to do with the Coptic sect, denounces it roundly as a heretical body, and wants Copts to turn Orthodox. We should say: Why Orthodox rather than Papist? Neale's diatribes against Roman schism in Egypt are very quaint. From the "national Church" point of view his friends the Orthodox are just as much schismatics as Romanists are. But the erection of a Latin see is an "act of open schism committed by Rome" (Holy Eastern Church, ii. 288); yet when a man turns Orthodox he "joins the Catholic Church" (ib. 265).
- ↑ The only Eastern Church which has ever seriously discussed the Filioque is that of the Orthodox. To them this has become the great hindrance to reunion (or the next greatest, after the Papacy). But the way of reunion to Nestorians and Monophysites is blocked by so much greater differences that they do not, so to say, come far enough along it to arrive at the Filioque difficulty.
