Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/359

 and holy, and not even anything rational and good. The attempts of these theologians, especially of our Khomyakóv, to overthrow the foundation of the church, the infallibility of the hierarchy, and to put in its place the mystical conception of all the believers who are united in love, is the last convulsion of this church teaching, a support which brings the whole structure to its fall. Indeed, a remarkable quid pro quo takes place here. To conceal its crude assertion that the church is the infallible hierarchy, the Theology cloaks itself with false definitions of the church in the sense of an assemblage of all the believers. The new theologians grasp this external and false definition and, imagining that they are basing their church upon it, destroy the one essential support of the church, the infallibility of the hierarchy. Indeed, for any one who does not even wish to trouble himself to investigate the arguments of the church about the infallibility of the hierarchy, it is sufficient to read all that which the Protestant literature has worked out in this respect. The foundation of the infallibility of the hierarchy is destroyed in the name of the foundation of the church as an assemblage of believers united in love. However, an assemblage of believers united in love can, obviously, not define any dogma, or a Nicene symbol, as Khomyakóv and other theologians believe.

An assemblage of believers united in love is such a general conception that upon it no common creed, or dogma, common to all the Christians, can be based, so that the work of the new theologians, if they are at all consistent, reduces itself to this, that the only foundation of the church, the infallibility of the church, is destroyed, but the new one is left what it was, a mystical conception from which can follow no creed, much less a confession of faith. The only foundation is the infallibility of the hierarchy,—for those who believe in it.