one clause which annulled it, and declared it a sacrilegious usurpation.
In fact that sovereignty can only be an usurpation if we seek to determine its character by a reference to the œcumenical councils.
Thus was iniquity false to herself in that famous assembly, which was nothing more than a conspiracy against sound doctrine, which, under the name of a union, promulgated only a mendacious compromise, broken before it was concluded; the abettors of which were anathematized by the Eastern Church; of which the Church of the West, represented in a great majority by the Council of Basle, condemned the principal author, Pope Eugene, as a heretic, a schismatic, and a rebel to the Church.
Since the sad drama of Florence the Papacy has not attempted to subjugate the Eastern Church. It has preferred to endeavour to disorganize her, little by little, in order gradually to attain to her enslavement. Its policy has been to pay an outward respect to the Eastern ritual and doctrine; to profit by every circumstance, particularly by all conflicts between nationalities, to insinuate itself and lend its authority as a support and a safeguard to national rights; to be contented, at first, with a vague and indeterminate recognition of that authority, and then, by all manner of hypocrisy and deceit, to strengthen that authority, in order to turn it afterward against the doctrines and ritual for which at first it feigned respect.
This explains the contradictory bulls issued by the Popes on the subject of the united of all churches. The united Greeks of the East and of Russia, the united Armenians, the united Bulgarians, the united Maronites, etc., etc.
If, as we hope, we should ever publish a special work on the points of difference between the Eastern and
