Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/255



most momentous fact in the history of Christendom during the Middle Ages is the separation between the Eastern and the Western Churches. When we look at the two great communions, each of which claims to be the one genuine Church, we see them to have so much in common that we may wonder at the absolutely irreconcilable attitude they maintain towards each other. In discipline, ritual, and doctrine they are much nearer together than Roman Catholics and Protestants, nearer even than High Anglicans and Evangelical Churchmen. Both are episcopal, sacerdotal, sacramental, orthodox in relation to the historic creeds. The note of the Eastern Church is said to be orthodoxy and that of the Western catholicity, so that the one is called "The Holy Orthodox Church," and the other "The Catholic Church." To some extent these differences of title are indicative of distinctions in the essential characters of the bodies they represent. The one is especially concerned with the defence of the creed, the other with the maintenance of organic unity. And yet