Nearly three hundred thousand of my countrymen worship God according to its doctrines, and all of them, excepting, perhaps the most ignorant, would feel indignant at the supposition that they were followers of the Church of Rome.
I will not fatigue my readers with a learned disquisition on the forms of worship, or on points of doctrine, for I shall effect my purpose much easier by a simple statement of the cardinal differences between the two churches, and I have no doubt they will at once be convinced, that there is a greater degree of relationship between the English or any other Reformed Church, and the Orthodox Eastern Church than there exists between it and the Church of Rome.
Learned historians, and some of the most intelligent and enquiring of Eastern travellers, have dwelt with much force on the early history of the Orthodox Eastern Church, and there is no doubt in my own mind that they have clearly established, not merely the fact of its not being an offshoot of the Church of Rome, nor in any way intimately connected with it; but, on the contrary, that since its establishment it has always been a Protestant Church, and that it is therefore more ancient in its Protestant character than either of the Reformed Churches.
Unfortunately for the character of the Orthodox Eastern Church, the knowledge and experience of these intelligent men has been confined to a very small circle of readers, and the greater part of the British public has attached infinitely more credit to the imperfect and superficial sketches of travellers, who resorting to our country for a short time, and after “doing” Syria in a month, beguile the tedium of their journey home by writing an account of their seeings and doings, concocting it in as rapid and careless a manner as their examination into the condition of the country was hasty and thoughtless.
It is upon the authority of such trustworthy writers, that I find the impression prevailing, that the creed, the doctrines, and forms of worship of the Orthodox Eastern Church are precisely similar to those of the Church of Rome. When resident in Syria, I have, on more than one occasion, attended church with English travellers, who, struck by the presence of pictures, which decorate the walls of all our churches, and by the similarity of the robes of the officiating priests to those worn by the priests of the Romish Church, conceived that they were in a Roman Catholic Church. It needed some explanation to remove this impression. Most of the writers to whom I allude—I will not mention their names—having received the same impression, they have at once jumped to the conclusion in which they invite their readers to concur, that the Orthodox Eastern Church is only a branch of the abhorred Church of Rome.