Metropolitan of Ephesus, Sophronios of Athens, and Neophytos III of Constantinople (1636–1637), were his chief pupils. The Orthodox, however, in the enormous majority were true to the faith of their fathers, and in the years following the murder of poor Lukaris they held four synods, at Constantinople (1639), Iasion (Yassy in Moldavia, 1643), Jerusalem (1672), and again at Constantinople (1672), in which they drew up most uncompromising professions of the real Orthodox faith, and condemned and anathematized Lukaris's Confession and all his followers. It was Lukaris's successor, Cyril II (three times Patriarch, 1634, 1635–1636, 1638–1639), who held the Synod of Constantinople in 1639, his successor, Parthenios II (1644–1645, 1648–1651), that of Yassy, and Dionysios IV[1] the other Synod of Constantinople (1672). It was also as a refutation of Lukaris's heresies that Peter Mogilas of Kiev (p. 364) and Dositheos of Jerusalem (1661–1669, p. 364)[2] drew up their Confessions.
The Synod of Jerusalem was by far the most important of all, and its Acts are the last official pronouncement of the Orthodox Church. Dositheos was Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1669 to 1707. At the consecration of a church at Bethlehem in 1672 he announced his intention of summoning a synod;[3] it met in the same year at Jerusalem. About seventy members attended, among others, Nektarios, ex-Patriarch of Constantinople, six metropolitans and two representatives of the Russian Church; Dositheos presided. The synod, of course, in the first place insists on all the Orthodox doctrines denied by Lukaris's Confession—free will, the seven Sacraments, "adoration (προσκύνησις)" of images, &c.; Protestants are "patently heretics and leaders of heresy" (Kimmel, p. 330). The Fathers, however, are anxious to save Lukaris's reputation. So they draw up a history of the wicked attempts made by the Calvinists to poison the Orthodox Church with their heresy, of which history
