lost the topmost branch; they accept the Deuterocanonical books of Scripture as equal to the others, they believe in and use the same seven Sacraments as we do, they honour and pray to Saints, have a great cult of holy pictures and relics, and look with unbounded reverence towards the all-holy Mother of God. Their sumptuous ritual, gorgeous vestments and elaborate ceremonies, their blessings and sacramentals, all make their Church seem what she so easily might once more become—the honoured sister of the great Latin Patriarchate. It is only when one examines the niceties of theology that one finds four or five points in which they are heretics, and of these most are doubtful. Both sides in this quarrel recognize that the real issue is one rather of schism than of heresy. Whereas the Protestant Reformation produced schisms because of its heresies, the issue between East and West has produced some heresies because of the schism. The chief points we have to consider are the questions of the Church and Primacy, of the Filioque, Transubstantiation and the Epiklesis, Purgatory, and the Immaculate Conception. But first we must see in what books they have declared their faith.
1. Orthodox Symbolic Books.
The Orthodox faith is contained first of all in the Apostles' Creed and in the Nicene Creed (of course without the Filioque).[1] Then in the decrees of the seven councils that they acknowledge as œcumenical, that is the first seven.[2] They insist very much
- ↑ They print a Greek translation of the Athanasian Creed in the Horologion (without the Filioque), but they do not ever say it liturgically.
- ↑ 1. Nicea (325); 2. Constantinople I (381); 3. Ephesus (431); 4. Chalcedon (451); 5. Constantinople II (553); 6. Constantinople III (681); 7. Nicea II (787). Although they still sometimes speak of their Photian Synod of 879 as the eighth general council, they always refer only to the first seven. It is one of the points in which they are inconsistent, and seem to acknowledge the consent of the West and its Patriarch as necessary for an entirely general council. They might just as well require the consent of the Nestorian and Monophysite bodies (since we, too, are heretics and schismatics), and this would leave only the first two. They also sometimes speak of general councils in quite another sense. Kyriakos calls the Vatican Council an "Œcumenical Synod of the Latin Church." Many of them are anxious to summon a great council now to settle their difficulties. If it does meet, will
