Russian Dissenters Scholars Choice Edition PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ...conflicted with their religious aspirations. Antichrist has annihilated the genuine priesthood, therefore they have none. "This," they cried, "is the last age, in which everyone must judge for himself what is best." 4 The Church, they hold, is an union of the faithful, and can dispense, if need be, with a hierarchy for the best of reasons, to wit, because it has Christ himself for its head. A priestless believer will point his finger to his own breast and say: "Here is the true Church, here, in my heart! Not in the timbers of a church, but in my ribs." The Apostle Paul wrote: "Ye are the temple of the living God," according to the divine utterance: "I will dwell in them etc." l In them therefore is fulfilled the teaching that every man is a temple of God not built with hands, that in each of us God lives and gives ear to the heart's prayers.2 You can hear the Bezpopovtsy to-day using such words as: 'I am the Church.'3 1 Istina for 1875, Vol. 38: -Interned Disputes among the Dissidents' 'Vestnik Europy, 1871, No. 1, art. by Rozov, p. 287. 'Orthodox Review, 1862, Pt. 1, p. 386. 4 T. Tverdynski, Discussions of orthodox principles with old ritualists, p. 437. Opinion on Priesthood and Sacraments There are even Bezpopovtsy, according to the Hegumen Paul, who maintain that "the priesthood itself and the Sacraments of the Eucharist and of anointing with Chrism are innovations. They declare that in the earliest age they never existed and were all introduced by Nikon. Before his date there was nothing but what the Bezpopovtsy now possess, namely an order of teachers, whom they also call popes." 4 This opinion, remarks Uzov, which seems merely absurd to the hegumen Paul, rests nevertheless...