Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/309

294 towards them has been fickle and changeable. They have been in turn persecuted and tolerated, threatened and encouraged, according to the whim of the sovereign or the prevailing influences of the moment. This shifting, fluctuating legislation, and the contradictory nature of the measures adopted are attributable to the general ignorance which existed regarding the different schismatic movements—ignorance the more gross, from the indifference and contempt felt for any popular manifestation of opinion, and which led to the careless and erroneous comprehension of all the various bodies, with their heterogeneous doctrines, under one head, the Raskol.

As a consequence of this grave misapprehension the same remedies were indiscriminately applied to them alL Orderly Old Believers, with a regular hierarchy, anarchical No Priests, with none, Flagellants and Champions of the Spirit, reactionary conservatives and revolutionary radicals—all confounded together with reckless disregard of reason or propriety—were treated alike.

As public opinion became by degrees more enlightened, and the apparition of eccentric and immoral sects rendered it necessary to make distinctions, insufficient classification again led to further confusion and error.

All Dissenters were included in two categories, "pernicious" sects and sects "less pernicious," as if the only difference between them consisted in the degree of evil.

The "pernicious," or dangerous sects, so called, comprised all whose doctrines appeared to threaten public or social order, to set at naught the moral law, or endanger the unity of the Orthodox Church. The peaceful Molokani and ignorant Sabbatarians figured in the official lists with the rebellious Stranniki, the fanatical Khlysti and Skoptsi.

In dealing with them the government seemed actuated