speak of the different branches of the Church, but they mean the sixteen bodies who are in communion with one another, and who together make up the Orthodox Church. The idea of a Church made up of mutually excommunicate bodies that teach different articles of faith and yet altogether form one Church is as inconceivable to them as it is to us.[1] In this matter from their point of view they hold the same position as we do. Schism means exclusion from the visible Church of Christ; all members of that Church are in communion with one another; she teaches one and the same faith everywhere, and is, in short, really one Church. The issue between us and them is, Which body is the Church of Christ, ours or theirs?
They have forms for receiving Latins into their Church[2] in which these expressions occur: "Lord, mercifully receive thy servant N. who abandons the heresy of the Latins ... bring him to the unity of the true teaching of thy Catholic and Apostolic Church." The priest thanks God for having given the convert grace "to seek the refuge of thy holy Catholic
1 The Branch theory, of which we hear so much in England, is really common to all Protestants. Every Protestant sect considers itself to be, not the whole, but a part, of the universal Church of Christ, though, of course, always the purest and most apostolic part. The only thing peculiar to the Anglican form of this theory is the exclusiveness with which they admit no other Protestant bodies as branches except their own. In the East especially it is very difficult, with the best intention, to find out what they mean by their theory. Which are the branches. Are valid orders the test? Then the Nestorian and Monophysite bodies are branches? The Archbishop of Canterbury's mission to the Nestorians and the civility of Anglicans to the Armenians would seem as if they thought so. In that case three of the four Orthodox Patriarchs (those of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem) are as much schismatics as Roman Catholic bishops in England. But probably most Anglicans would say that Nestorians and Monophysites are not Catholics because they are heretics condemned by general councils. To which they would answer that Ephesus and Chalcedon were not general councils. They no more acknowledge them (the Nestorians neither, the Monophysites not Chalcedon) than Anglicans acknowledge Trent or Vatican. Mr. Palmer went to Russia with the simplest of theories: the Church consists of three branches — the Eastern (presumably he meant only the Orthodox) and the Western, subdivided into the Continental and the British [e. gr. Visit, p. 174). Of course every one asked him: Why three, and why those three? How entirely they all denied this theory may be seen throughout the book.
2 E. d'Or. ii. pp. 129-138. The later one is imitated from the form drawn up by Pope Gregory XV for receiving them into the Catholic Church.
