Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/353

 is complete and divine. The truth which we preach is the same truth. Even leaving out of discussion the fact that for every man who has read Holy Scripture and who has seen the arguments which the Theology adduces in proof, it is evident that Christ never established any hierarchy, any church, in the sense in which the Theology understands it; leaving out of consideration that for every one who reads history it is evident that many men have imagined themselves to be such churches, while they contended with one another and did one another harm,—there involuntarily rises the question: on what grounds does our hierarchy consider itself to be the true one, and the other hierarchies and assemblies not to be true? Why is the Nicene symbol an expression of the true, holy church, and why not the Arian symbol, which our hierarchy has been contending against, for were not the bishops, partisans of Arius, as much ordained by succession from the apostles as the partisans of the Nicene symbol? And if this ordainment does not save men from error, why is our church the keeper of truth, and not of untruth? The Theology does not even make an attempt at answering this, for by its doctrine it cannot give any answer, since subjects that are arbitrarily passed upon cannot be proved, and so the hierarchy says only that it is right because it is holy and infallible, and it is holy and infallible, because it is a follower of the hierarchy which has acknowledged the Nicene symbol. But why is the hierarchy which has acknowledged the Nicene symbol the true one? To that there is, and there can be, no answer, so that the recognition of the hierarchy, which calls itself the true, holy, only, universal and apostolic church, is only an expression of a demand that faith should be put in it, an assertion like the one made by a man who says, “Upon my word, I am right.” But this assertion is particularly weakened by the fact that every assertion of the hierarchy about being holy is always due