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324 independence. In proportion as he stood aloof from the Greeks, sheltered by Turkish patronage, he lost influence over his compatriots. His official position neutralised his religious mission. He was bound to fail for the reason that "no man can serve two masters."

Before passing from this disappointing passage of history, it may be convenient to glance at a later approach to the Eastern Church from the West, in the quaint action of the English non-jurors. Most people will now consider these worthy men to have been quite wrong-headed. A little knot of conscientious passive-resisters" to the settlement under William and Mary, they contained some of the saintliest souls in the Church of England, among others Bishop Ken, the author of well-known morning and evening hymns. No one can doubt their sincere conscientiousness or their deep piety. Now it happened in the year 1713 that Arsenius the archbishop of Thebais was in England on one of those many humiliating begging expeditions to which the representatives of the Greek Church were repeatedly driven by the penury of their flock. Here he came in contact with the non-jurors, and this led them to open a correspondence with the Eastern patriarch through Peter the Great, then at the height of his power in Russia. In the year 1717 they asked the tsar to send their proposals to the patriarchs, as from "the Catholic remnant of the British Churches." It would seem that neither Peter nor the Eastern prelates at first suspected the isolated position of the non-jurors or their comparative insignificance. Indeed, so obscure was the movement on the English side, that it was not till after some years that news of it reached Archbishop Wade. Immediately he learnt what was going on—which was in the year 1724—he wrote to Chrysanthus, the patriarch of Jerusalem, exposing the true position of affairs. This pricked the bubble. The non-juror's dream was shattered in a moment.