Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/343

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CYRIL LUCAR AND THE REFORMATION
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interest of the Reformation. He was succeeded at Alexandria by Gerasius, another Cretan, but a staunch upholder of old-fashioned Greek orthodoxy.

Cyril drew up a Confession of Faith, a perusal of which makes it clear that he had strong leanings towards Calvinism. But how far he went in this direction has been a matter of dispute. His friends of the orthodox Church, and also English High Churchmen anxious for union with the Greek Church, have endeavoured to minimise his Protestanism when they have not thrown over Cyril in despair as a heretic. It is necessary, therefore, to have some of his statements before us in their exact phraseology if we would judge for ourselves where he stands. He begins with an affirmation of the Trinity—with respect to which all the leading reformers were agreed; but he affirms the Greek doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father by the Son. Article iii. is as follows: "We believe that God, before the foundation of the world, predestinated His elect to glory without respect of their working, and that there was none other cause which impelled Him to this election than His good pleasure and Divine mercy; in like manner that before the foundation of the world He reprobated whom He would reprobate; of which reprobation, if a man will regard the absolute right and sovereignty of God, he will without doubt find the cause to be the will of God; but if again he regards the laws and rules of good order which the Divine will employs for the government of the world, he will find it to be justice, for God is long-suffering, but yet just." Here we have the full, unqualified Calvinistic doctrine of election, including reprobation, logically supra-lapsarian, though the final clause seems to introduce a qualification by insisting on justice, but that only dogmatically without any attempt at a reconciliation with the earlier statement. The confession decidedly affirms baptismal regeneration—in which it agrees with the majority of the reformers. It declares that Christ alone "does the work of a true and proper Mediator"—a phrase which by its defining attributes "true and