Answer of the Great Church of Constantinople to the Papal
En- cyclical on Union. The original Greek, with English translation, edited by the very Rev. Archimandrite Eustathius Metallinos.— This document, signed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and twelve other prelates, is, as may be supposed, full of interest. The gist of the whole is that the Orthodox Church is, as always, "ready to accept any proposal of union, if only the Bishop of Rome would shake off once for all the whole series of the many and divers anti-evangelical novelties (livreva-y-yeAuccin, vforrepuryLv) that have been privily brought into his Church." These " novelties " include the " Filioque," sprinkling instead of immersion in baptism, unleavened bread, Communion in one kind, the doctrine of purgatorial fire, the doctrine of Supererogation, the immaculate conception of the Virgin, the primacy of the Roman See, and, of course, the Papal Infallibility. This is part of what the Patriarch and his Suffragans say on this last point. After citing Peter's denial of Christ (surely this was expressly forgiven) and Paul's repeated rebuke, the prelates go on, "The Pope Liberius, in the fourth century, subscribed an Arian confession ; and likewise Zosimus, in the fifth century, approved an heretical confession, denying original sin. Vigilins, in the sixth century, was condemned for wrong opinion by the fifth Council ; and Honorius, having fallen into the Monothelite heresy, was con- demned in the seventh century by the sixth (Ecumenical Council as a heretic."
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