Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/244

Rh A council, under his direction, established regulations for the Popovtsi, and this branch of the Raskol, thus provided with a regular hierarchy and a complete organization, seemed definitively constituted as an independent and united Church. Dissensions, however, soon arose; the new clergy, less docile than their renegade predecessors, resented the domination of the lay element in the community, and arrogated to themselves an authority which the congregations were reluctant to acknowledge. The council, from prudential motives, maintained Belo-Krinitsa as the seat of the pontiff, but appointed a vicar to reside in Russia as his representative; the metropolitan, suspicious, and apprehensive of diminution of his dignity, refused to delegate his powers to a vicegerent. By this conflict of authority Popovtsism was, ere its organization had attained full maturity, threatened with internal divisions.

In the midst of these dissensions the Polish insurrection of 1863 broke out, and the Old Believers again fell under suspicion, and were threatened with the harsh treatment which doubtful allegiance would merit. They indignantly repudiated the charges of treachery and treason, and eagerly offered pledges of their loyalty "to God and the Tsar." They sent Cyril back to his foreign home, and the council proposed to cease, for a time, all relations with him. Their leaders at Rogojski addressed the emperor with assurances of their fidelity, and issued an encyclical letter to all members of the "Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of the Old Believers," with an exposition of their doctrines calculated to conciliate the authorities of the established Church and of the State, declaring that "the Old Believers who recognize the necessity of a priesthood agree in all questions of dogma with the Greco-Russian Church; they worship the same God,