Rome. Here he accused his Patriarch of tyrannical conduct towards himself, and told many lies. At Rome they were quite kind to him, they even gave him a pension, but they told him to go back to Syria. He got as far as Malta, then dodged and came to Marseilles and Paris. Maximos ordered him home; but now, in open disobedience to his Patriarch and the Roman authorities, he came to England, pretending that he had been sent to collect alms for his poor flock. Wiseman, then Vicar Apostolic of the London district, gave him a celebret and leave to collect alms. People were less suspicious then of these begging Orientals than we have become since. For a time he celebrated in the Catholic church at Chelsea. But meanwhile he was talking to the Anglicans, and telling them a very different story. This came out, and Wiseman withdrew his faculties. Totūnǵī went off to Lord Palmerston and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Anglicans, of course, were delighted. They seem not to have had the vaguest idea who he was. Anglicans never do understand who these people are who come and beg from them. All they thought was that he was a "bishop of the Syrian Church" (whatever that might mean) who was persecuted by the Pope of Rome. Needless to say, every Anglican heart went out to the Apostolic person so ill-used (hardly an Anglican alive understood the difference between a Melkite and the Orthodox; very few knew that between Orthodox and Jacobites). So the Archbishop of Canterbury gave him a sum of money, just to show, says he, "the sympathy between the Catholic Church of England and the Church of Syria." Totūnǵī got up a meeting at Leamington under the auspices of Anglican bishops. There was a great crowd and much enthusiasm. A parson, Mr. Craig, explained to the meeting that the illustrious person before them wanted to become a British citizen in order to enjoy the protection of Empire. "The presence of this eminent Prelate in our country will help to convince the members of our Church that our brethren in the East have preserved the doctrines of the Church of England.[1] ... The creed of the Bishop of Tripolis is in perfect accord with that of the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ.[2] Deprived of help from France and Austria,
- ↑ Observe the gorgeous muddle of all this. "Our brethren in the East"; as if they were all one body in union with Totūnǵī, and committed to his views. "Preserving the doctrines of the Church of England," as a standard for Syria, is very funny.
- ↑ Mr. Craig did not know, of course, that the eminent Prelate was Bishop of Tripolis only on the strength of appointment by a Popish Patriarch. There was an Orthodox Metropolitan, his rival,
