Page:History of the Nonjurors.djvu/335

Rh be safe from receiving any damage, by a wrong application, yet the vulgar may come thereby to be ensnared, and be carried to symbolize too much with the custom of idolaters, without designing it: to prevent which they therefore propose, that the 9th Article of the second Council of Nice, concerning the worship of Images, be so explained by the wisdom of the Bishops and Patriarchs of the Oriental Church, as to make it inoffensive, and to remove the scandal, which may be occasioned by a direct application to them.

"If a concordate can be agreed on with some limitations and indulgences on both sides, then it is proposed that a Church, to be called the Concordia, be built in or about London, which may be under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Alexandria, and in which, at certain times to be agreed on, there shall be the English service of the united British Catholics performed according as the same shall be approved or licensed by that Patriarch, or by the representatives of the Oriental Church. And that on the other side, if it should please God to restore the suffering Church of this island and her Bishops to her and their just rights, they promise to use their endeavours, that leave be granted to a Greek Bishop here for the time residing, or to such as shall be deputed by him, to celebrate, upon certain days, divine service in the cathedral church of St. Paul according to the Greek rites. But if one common Liturgy could be on both sides agreed on, which should be unexceptionable, being compiled out of the ancient Greek Liturgies, some passages and rites only omitted, which are not of the substance, and which may give offence to one side, it is thought that nothing can more conduce to the establishing a union and communion betwixt both parties on catholic terms, would but the Patriarchs