Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/253

Rh great synod, in which your Pope Oaphanius forbids these things. We indeed, when we learned that in Armenia and some other places they ate cheese made from sheep’s milk at the great fast, ordered our people who were there to abstain from such food and from every sacrifice to devils; from which, if a man abstain not, he should be separated from the Church; and if he be a priest, he should be suspended from performing the sacred offices. Moreover, the third error and sin is very great, concerning the marriage of priests, for ye forbid those who have wives to receive the Lord’s body; whereas the holy council, which was held at Gangra, writes in the fourth canon, ‘He who despises a priest who has a wife according to law, and says that it is not lawful to receive the sacrament at his hand, let him be accursed.’ The council also says, ‘Every deacon or priest putting away his own wife shall be deprived of his priesthood’. The fourth sin is the anointment or confirmation. Is it not everywhere said in the councils, ‘I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins’. If, therefore, there is one baptism, there will be also one anointing, and the virtue of the bishop will be the same as that of the priest. The fifth error is with reference to unleavened bread, which error indeed is the beginning and root of all heresy, as I will prove; and although it might be necessary to bring to the proof many Scriptures, yet I will do otherwise, and for the present will merely say: That the Jews make unleavened bread in memory of their deliverance and flight from Egypt; but we are once for all Christians—we never were in Egyptian bondage—and we have been commanded to omit this kind of Jewish observances with respect to the Sabbath, unleavened bread, and circumcision. And as St. Paul says, whosoever follows one of them is bound to keep the whole law; for the same apostle says, ‘Brethren, I have received from the Lord, that which also I have delivered unto you, how that the Lord on the night on which he was betrayed, took bread, blessed, and