Just as the eleventh century saw the division of the One Church of Christ into the Eastern and Western Churches, so the sixteenth witnessed the disruption of the latter into the Roman and Protestant Churches. The corruption of faith and morals that had invaded Romanism, the intellectual decadence of the Roman clergy, and the absolutism of the Pope, who wore a triple tiara to illustrate his dominion over earthly, heavenly and infernal affairs, — these were the causes which inspired the three great reformers, Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, to protest against the Church of Rome, and to rouse up against her half of Western Christendom. Busily engaged in waging their long battle with sword and pen, these men had no time to think of the enslaved Church of the East, who, long before them, had lifted her voice in protest against the arrogance of Rome. One of them, however, did remember her; this was Melanchthon, one of Luther's earliest fellow-workers, who upon meeting Demetrius Mysos, about to depart for Constantinople, at Wittenberg in 1559, entrusted him with a letter for the reigning Patriarch, Joasaph II In this letter he thanks God that in the midst of so great a multitude of ungodly and abominable foes, He has preserved for Himself a flock that rightly honors and calls upon His Son Jesus Christ”; and he assures the Patriarch that the followers of the Reformation also “devoutly observe the Holy Scriptures, the Canons of the Holy Synods, and the teaching of the Greek Fathers, while they abhor the prattle, superstition and self-erected doctrines of the uncultured Latins.”

The Theologians of Tubingen, the Protestants of Poland, and the Confession of Cyril Lucas.

   Melanchthon received no reply to his letter. When, however, in 1574, the Tubingen professors Martin Crusius and Jacob Andrew, wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremias II, sending him the Augsburg Confession, which was the first formal exposition of Protestantism, Jeremias replied with dignity and sincerity, thus initiating an important exchange of correspondence, in the course of which Protestantism was nevertheless criticized on many points for not keeping step with the truth. In 1600, the locum-tenens of the Ecumenical Throne, Meletius Pegas, replied in a similar way to the Protestants of Poland, who were suffering a common persecution with the Orthodox at the hands of the Jesuits, and who, after the Synod of Vilna, proposed an ecclesiastical union between them. “The union of those opposed to each other” — (so ran the reply made by Meletius) — “is devoutly to be desired, but Protestantism and Orthodoxy differ from each other on essential points. Let us, however, love one another, and let us not lose hope.” But an entirely different course was, it seems, pursued by the previously mentioned great Patriarch, Cyril Lucar, who was favorably disposed towards the ideas of the Reformers. He collaborated with the Protestants against the Papists; he carried on a friendly correspondence with various Protestants, including George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, bewailing to them the sufferings of the Greeks; he dispatched the precious “Codex Alexandrinus” to Charles I of England in 1628, as a thank-offering for his rescue from the Janizaries; and he sent Metrophanes Critopoulos to study at Oxford at princely expense. In addition to all this, it is said that he even drew up and published a Confession, in which he accepted Calvinistic beliefs; but on this point the evidence is confused. Through two of her Synods, the first at Constantinople in 1638 and the second at Jassy in 1642, the Orthodox Church denounced this Confession as tending towards Calvinism, without, however, associating it with the person of Cyril Lucar; and who knows but that on this point also Lucar may have been the victim of forgery?

Protestant Missionaries.

   It was not long before Protestantism began to break up into a multitude of heresies, owing partly to its lack of unity in dogma and government, an partly to the individual interpretation of the Bible according to each man's lights. Representatives of some of these heretical sects, particularly from America, visited Greece as early as 1810; and others arrived immediately after the Revolution, with the object of assisting the Greeks towards their national and spiritual awakening. Some of them opened schools, which were the crying need of the times, and other distributed books or gave out copies of the Holy Scriptures either in the original text or in modern Greek translation. The Greeks at first welcomed them without suspicion as their benefactors; and certain Patriarchs of Constantinople, such as Cyril VI in 1814 and Gregory V in 1819, applauded the propagation of the Bible and praised the popular Greek translations as being of great benefit to the people. But when the Protestant missionaries began to reveal their secret designs by trying to effect conversions and by distributing together with the Scriptures little volumes offensive to Orthodox sentiments, they aroused the enmity of the nation and immediately became unpopular, while their Scriptures were consigned to public bonfires. The Greeks, who have suffered so greatly for the preservation of their faith, are acutely sensitive to any attack on it. That is why, after more than a century of activity in Greece, Protestantism can today point to no greater achievement than a handful of so-called “Evangelicals” in Athens and elsewhere.

Anglicans and Orthodox.

   The relations between the Orthodox and Anglican Churches are rather different, for the latter, alone among the various branches of Protestantism, both acknowledges the three orders of Priesthood and more or less honors the sacred Tradition. As we have already noted, relations were first established between Orthodox and Anglicans in the time of Lucar. They were renewed again in the eighteenth century, when the Non-jurors (that section of the Church who refused to take the oath of allegiance to George I of England) submitted a plan of union with the Eastern Church to the Patriarchs of the East. But it was particularly from 1869 onwards that Anglicans and Orthodox began to come closer together, when the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory VI, after receiving with great satisfaction letters from Campbell, Archbishop of Canterbury, in favor of union, sent an encyclical letter to his clergy directing them to bury members of the Anglican Church, in the absence of Anglican ministers, and dispatched the learned Archbishop of Syra Alexander Lycurgos, to England, in order to strengthen the bonds between the two Churches. Since then, Anglican bishops have more than once visited the Churches of the East, as John of Salisbury in 1898, the present Bishop of London at the beginning of the Great War, and the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, who was welcomed in Athens last year. Bishops from Greece, Russia, Serbia and other countries, not forgetting the Patriarchs Photius of Alexandria and Damianos of Jerusalem, have visited England in return, and have joined with the Anglicans in solemn prayer in St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. A great forward step in the relations between the two Churches was taken in the summer of 1930, when almost the whole of the Orthodox Church sent its representatives to the Lambeth Conference, under the leadership of the present enterprising and progressive Patriarch of Alexandria, Meletius Metaxakis, in order to discuss and discover terms of union. This friendship between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy is due in the first place to the recognition by the Orthodox Church of the validity of Anglican Orders, which has always been disputed by the Roman Church; secondly, to the abstention of the Anglican Church from efforts to convert the Orthodox; and thirdly, to the exchange of letters of peace on ceremonial occasions. The Anglican and Orthodox Churches differ from each other on points of dogma, and a sacramental union between them is for the present still remote. The variety of belief, which characterizes the one Church, is incompatible with the uniformity of faith, professed by the other. But by the mutual interest they take in each other, and by the brotherly nature of their external relations, Anglicanism and Orthodoxy are marking out the path that all separate Churches should follow towards the eventual attainment of full and catholic unity.

Theological Literature.