inhabiting it, Armenians, Georgians, Nestorians, Turks, Persians, and Koords, address the Almighty in an unknown tongue.

Upon the whole, the Armenian Christians closely resemble, in their spiritual condition, those of the Greek church, with this difference; that piety is still more rare, and there exists no spirit of inquiry. But, on the other hand, absolute infidelity is not met with; and as the Armenian church does not imitate the exclusiveness of the Romish, its members are taught to regard Christians of other communions as holding indeed to doctrines and rites inferior to theirs, but still as members of the Catholic Church of Christ. The Scriptures are recognised as of binding and paramount authority; and an appeal to them, in argument, is generally final.

According to the latest and most exact returns to which we have access, the Armenian nation does not now number more than about 1,700,000 souls, who, previously to recent territorial changes, were thus distributed :-in the Russian provinces, 42,000; in Turkey, 1,500,000; in Persia, 70,000; in India, 40,000; in the Austrian dominions and other parts of Europe, 10,000. The Armenians within the Russian empire are now a much larger proportion. According to Dr. Walsh, chaplain to the British embassy to the Porte, there were computed to be resident in Constantinople and the adjacent villages, a few years ago, 200,000 Armenians, of whom about 4000 belonged to the papal communion.* All the Armenians of the Levant are compelled to learn Turkish and

A letter from Mr. Benjamin Barker, agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, dated Smyrna, April 1836, gives the following interesting particulars of the Armenians at Constantinople, many of whom are stated to have become decidedly pious: "A priest of that nation denounced another, a friend of the missionaries, to the patriarch, for holding heretical opinions: on which, it was determined that a Committee of Clergymen should examine him. A trial in consequence took place; and when the accused had made a confession of his faith, he was judged to be very orthodox in all his principles, and most honourably acquitted; while his accuser was himself deemed an heretic, if he did not profess similar doctrines. After the examination, a bishop addressed him, and said, 'Be of good cheer; and be not afraid; for there are hundreds more who hold the same principles as yourself.'-The accused is one of those who go under the denomination of Evangelists, whose rule of faith is the Gospel."

Italian, or French, as a medium of communication with their Ottoman masters and with the Franks; and they often understand these languages better than their own. Many Armenians can read and write both Turkish and French, who are unable to translate their own books. Though fond of religious works, Dr. Walsh says, they have little taste for general literature. Their patriarch gave his sanction to the new edition of the New Testament in Armenian, printed at Constantinople by Mr. Leeves, the agent of the Bible Society; and the Armenian Bibles have been purchased with avidity.* A printing-press has been attached to the Patriarchate since the year 1697; at which, during a hundred and twenty-five years, only fiftytwo works had been printed, up to 1823, but of each of these several editions. Forty-seven were religious works; viz. commentaries on the Bible, sermons, prayer-books, lives of saints, hymns, psalters, and a panegyric on the angels. The five not on sacred subjects were, an Armenian Grammar, a History of Etchmiadzin, a Treatise on Good Behaviour, a Tract on Precious Stones, and a Romance of the City of Brass. An Armenian Almanack is published annually at Constantinople. At the convent of San Lazaro at Venice, there is also a press which has issued a number of books in Armenian. In 1812, Johannes Eleazar, a distinguished Armenian, a Russian privy-councillor, and Grand Knight of the Order of Jerusalem, died and bequeathed funds for the foundation, at Moscow, of an extensive and magnificent college for Armenian youth, which has since been erected with the sanction and aid of the Russian Government, whose policy has been, for the last fifty years, to treat the Armenian refugees with favour and encouragement.

The first edition of the Armenian Bible was published at Amsterdam in 1666; the second, at Venice; the third, in 1705, at Constantinople; the fourth, at Venice; the fifth, at St. Petersburg, in 1817, under the auspices of the Armenian patriarch, at the expense of the Russian Bible Society; the sixth, at the Serampore press, near Calcutta.

CHAPTER IV.

Ecclesiastical relation of Russia to the Greek Church.-History of the Russian Church.-Numbers and political condition of the clergy.—Ecclesiastical orders. Superstitious ritual.-State of education and national morals.-Remains of ancient heathen usages.-Rites of burial, and absolution of the dead. -Rites attending Baptism.-Slavonic ritual.-Household rites.-Russian sects.-Proselytes to the Romish Communion.-Comparison between the doctrines of the Greek and Roman Churches.

RUSSIA stands in a relation to the Eastern church, strikingly analogous to that in which Austria (which is but the German empire under another name) stands to Western Christendom. Both are, in their origin, barbarian powers, which were first brought into contact with the empires of the West and the East by hostile invasion and conquest. Both, under similar circumstances, adopted a corrupted form of the Christian faith, and thus became transformed into protectors and patrons of their adopted church. It was in the year 801, that the Pope placed on the head of Charlemagne a golden diadem, in the name of the senate and people of Rome, and saluted him by the title of Emperor; but the first German Emperor who assumed that title, was Otho I., A. D. 962. The Muscovites had, by repeated inroads, made themselves formidable at Constantinople, when, in 935, the Czarina submitted to baptism. The era of Christianity in Russia, however, is the marriage of Vladimir, her grandson, to the sister of the Greek Emperor, in 988, of which the conversion of the barbarian prince was the condition, and the national submission to Christian rites, the result. The imperial crown of the East was never transferred to the Czar, as that of the West was to the German Cæsar. Nevertheless, the parallel holds good thus far; that, as the holy Roman empire acknowledges the German potentate as its head, and nominally exists only in the Austrian power,

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so, the Christian empire of the East, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, may be considered as surviving, at least ecclesiastically, in the Russian, which dates from about that period its nascent greatness.* The Patriarch of Constantinople at first extended his supremacy over the Russians, and appointed the metropolitan; but this could not be allowed to continue, after the seat of the patriarchate had fallen under the dominion of the Mussulmans. In 1589, in a council held at Moscow, the Constantinopolitan pontiff was induced to place at the head of the Russian Church and nation, an independent Patriarch, in the person of the metropolitan of Moscow; and from that time till the reign of Peter the Great, the patriarchal throne was filled by a succession of pontifical rulers, whose dignity and authority commanded even the homage of the Czar. On Palm Sunday, when the Patriarch rode in procession through the city, the Czar himself led the ass or horse upon which he was seated, walking by his side. When the Czar partook of the Eucharist in the cathedral, he stood before the Metropolitan, wearing the habit of a deacon. On the feast of All Saints, the Patriarch dined with the Czar ; and the latter stood at the table, and served him. Even Peter himself, in his youth, is said to have performed these humiliating ceremonies; but his aspiring spirit revolted against the monstrous assumption of ecclesiastical superiority,

"It is remarkable," says Dr. Pinkerton, "how much the state of the modern Greeks, under the Turkish yoke, resembled that of the Russians, in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and part of the fifteenth centuries, under that of the Tartars; and that, though delivered into the hands of their enemies, both were still preserved as distinct nations, and remained steadfast in the Christian profession, notwithstanding all the efforts of the Tartars and Turks to gain them over to Islamism. Such have been the signal chastisements which the Lord has sent upon the Eastern church, to deliver over first one half of it, and then the other, to the enemies of the Cross; the Russians to suffer bondage for nearly three centuries under the successors of Jingis Khan; and the Greeks for nearly four hundred years under the Ottomans." Pinkerton's Russia, p. 236. It affords no vindication of the ambitious policy of Russia, that it has been the instrument of retributive judgements upon the Turkish and Tatar nations; any more than it justified the barbarous inroads of the Asiatic hordes, that they were the predicted ministers of the Divine displeasure against apostate Christendom. But the fact is not the less remarkable, as corresponding to the inspired denunciation: "He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword."

and he resolved to abolish the rival dignity. Hadrian, the tenth and last patriarch, died in 1700. His successor in the metropolitan chair of Kazan, presided, as exarch, over the affairs of the Church, until a synod, consisting of twelve ecclesiastical dignitaries, was substituted for the patriarchal government.

Prior to this great revolution in the ecclesiastical government of Russia, the bishops were absolute in their respective dioceses; and the power of the hierarchy had attained a height which rivalled the loftiest aspirations of the Romish priesthood. The concessions obtained for the clergy, by Leontius, the second metropolitan, from the royal convert Vladimir, divested the sovereign of a great part of his own rights. Not content with granting to the clergy throughout his dominions, the tithe of every kind of grain, cattle, fish, wild beasts, &c.; also of commerce, and the revenues of courts of justice; he assigned to their jurisdiction, contracts of marriage, divorces, the adjudication of all differences between man and wife, and the cognizance of almost every kind of moral transgression, including non-observance of the fasts, heresy, witchcraft, evil-speaking, and the evil eye. The measures and weights of the empire were also placed under episcopal superintendence, as well as all hospitals and monasteries, midwives, physicians, and usurers. These royal concessions were enforced with the following terrific denunciation: "Whosoever shall break any of these ordinances, to him it shall be accounted for sin, and he shall not obtain forgiveness of the same from the Lord God, but he shall inherit wrath and woe: and to my own judges and courts, I command, and witness before Christ the Lord and before all His saints, and in the presence of all the people, that ye wrong not the bishops of their holy revenues, and taxes, and ecclesiastical rights; and that the civil courts shall give nine parts of the revenue to the Tzar, and the tenth part to the holy Church, to our father the bishop, and to all the bishops throughout all the land of Russia, where the sacred thrones of the bishops are erected. And whosoever shall break these laws, which I have ordained according to the regulations of the holy Apostles and Fathers,