( ONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT. 285
At the side of the executive Council of Ministers stands, by the terms of the constitution, a deliberative Council of State. To the Council of State all Bills must be referred from the Chamber of Deputies, and returned with observations or amendments within 10 days ; but this term may be prolonged by resolution of the Chamber to 15 days more. In case the Council of State make no report at the expiry of the time fixed, the Chamber of Deputies may vote the law and send it up to the king. The Council of State must consist of not less than 15 nor more than 25 members. They are named by the Crown at the recommendation of the ministers, and hold office for ten years.
Church and Education.
The whole of the inhabitants of the kingdom are adherents of the Greek Orthodox Church, the only dissenters from it consisting of about 24,000 Poman Catholics, dispersed over the seaport towns. By the terms of the constitution of 1864, the Greek Orthodox Church is declared the religion of the state, but complete toleration and liberty of worship is guaranteed to all other sects, of whateA r er form of belief. Nominally, the Greek clergy OAve allegiance to the Patri- arch of Constantinople, who is elected by the votes of the bishops and optimates subject to the Sultan, and whose jurisdiction extends over Thrace and other countries, including Wallachia and Moldavia, as well as the greater part of Asia Minor. But the jurisdiction of the Patriarch, existing in theory, has frequently been challenged, while the real ecclesiastical authority, formerly exercised by him, was annulled by the resolutions of a National Synod, held at Nauplia, in 1833, which vested the government of the Orthodox Church, with- in the limits of the kingdom, in a permanent council, called the Holy Synod, consisting of the Metropolitan of Athens, and four arch- bishops and bishops, who must reside at the seat of the executive. The Orthodox Church has four archbishops and six bishops, on the continent of Greece ; six archbishops and six bishops in the Pelopon- nesus ; and five archbishops, and as many bishops, besides the Metropolitan of Corfu, in the Ionian Islands.
The Orthodox Greek Church differs from the Church of Pome as to the honour given to the later General Councils, the number of sacraments, the use of both kinds by the laity in the eucharist, the time of observing Easter, the doctrine of Purgatory, the mode of making the sign of the Cross, the celibacy of the clergy, and the use of the Scriptures by the laity. While differing from the Church of Pome on all these points, the Greek Church agrees with it in the doctrine of Transubstantiation, in praying to the Virgin and saints,
