sion of the second letter, they deciphered the apocalyptic number 666, they said he concealed his accursed name under the letter M.[1] The council at Moscow, which, while condemning Nikon, had anathematized the Raskol, was convoked in 1666; from this number, by dropping the thousand, in accordance with the old Russian custom of reckoning dates, they had 666; and as this was the number of the "beast," they read the date of the council as marking the commencement of Satan's reign. They found in the word Russia (Russa or Roussa) an anagram of Assur, or Assour of the Bible, and averred that the curses of the prophets against the Assyrian cities of Nineveh and Babylon were aimed at their own unhappy land. With their country thus given over to the powers of hell, and the devil sitting on the throne, surrounded by his imps, in the persons of the tsar's ministers and favorites, the Raskolniks felt it to be a religious duty to reject every innovation introduced, and every change made, under this Satanic rule, suffering with patient endurance, even unto death, rather than yield compliance to unrighteous behests. They carried their resistance into all the detail of daily life; as matters of conscience, they eschewed the use of tobacco, for "the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man" (Mark vii. 15); of sugar, as it is refined with blood, and, by the Scriptures, man may not eat of the blood of beasts; of tea and coffee, as of foreign production; of the potato, as being the fruit With which the serpent tempted Eve. They objected to the paving of the streets, as a foreign invention. They submitted to double taxation, deprivation of civil rights, and to exile
- ↑ The Slav letters of the alphabet were, like the Greek, used for figures; and imperator, without the m, figured thus: i=10, p=80, e=5, 1=100, a=1, t=300, 0=70, r=100; total, 666.
