United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The practice of hiring a priest from the Orthodox Church, to conduct a service for the Old Believers, is still very common in the far North, where all villages have not the means to keep a "Pope" of their own; and many an Orthodox clergyman thus adds considerably to his precarious income by officiating for those whom his great-grandfathers excommunicated as heretics; indeed, the Government now encourages this practice, and has made some attempt to heal up the schism by allowing its priests to adopt, to a slight extent, the old customs in villages where all the inhabitants are Raskolniks.
At this the Raskolniks insisted that the sign of the cross ought to be made with two fingers, and out of this difference arose more bitterness than from all other causes put together.
And so, in their hunt after the hidden sense of narratives and words, some of the Raskolniks have allegorized the histories of the Old and New Testaments, and changed the gospel records into parables. Some have gone so far as to see in the greatest of the gospel miracles nothing but types.
Such alterations are defended on the ground that to throw investigators off the scent the Beast changes the number which is meant to designate him, so that he should be recognized under the number 662 or 664 as clearly as under 666. Turning from the particular sovereign to the imperial title, the Raskolniks have unearthed the number of the Beast in the letters composing it.
When the raskolniks challenged the heads of the orthodox church to discussion, she wished to preside and hold the meeting in the open air, at the Lobnoe Miesto on the Red Place. There was, however, so much opposition that she was forced to call the assembly in the Palace of Facets, and sat behind the throne of her two brothers, present though invisible.
They were permitted to practice their ancient rites in the cities and to wear beards without molestation, upon condition of paying a double poll-tax. The millions of Raskolniks in Russia to-day still consider New Russia a creation of the evil one, and the Tsar as Antichrist. They yield a sullen compliance pray for the Tsar, then in private throw away the handle of door if a heretic has touched it.
One of the most important occurrences in this reign was the attempt of the Patriarch Nikon to establish an authority in the East similar to that of the Pope in the West and in many ways to Latinize the Church. This attempt to place the Tsar under spiritual authority was put down by a popular revolt followed by stricter orthodox methods in a sect known as the Raskolniks.
With the accession of Peter the Great, while he was reducing everything to confusion before their bewildered eyes, and trampling under foot the old customs, along with morality itself at times, the Raskolniks were at no loss to recognize in him the coming Antichrist.
Word Of The Day