Page:History of the Nonjurors.djvu/377

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History of the Nonjurors.
359

world." The late Queen had given £300, of which £200 were still in the hands of the Bishop of London. George I. had also given £100 for the same object, namely, for the Church of Alexandria, so that these sums could not be appropriated to the payment of the Archbishop's debts. The writer then mentions, as a motive to charity, the benefits received from that Church. "If we have profited by the labours of the learned and pious Fathers of that Church; if we have been obliged to Clemens, Origen, Dionysius, Athanasius, Cyril, Chrysostom and others, for handing down the faith of the Church in opposition to heretics and infidels; we are obliged to them for Spiritual things, and ought now to minister unto them in carnal things." The Petition is addressed, "To the Most Noble, Most Reverend, Honourable and Worthy, the Nobility, Clergy, Gentry, and Commons, Citizens or Strangers, in the kingdom of England whose hearts God hath touched with divine love and charity, to commiserate the distresses of their afflicted brethren." The Petition then gives a summary of the facts of the case: that the Archbishop was sent by the Patriarch of Alexandria in 1712, to represent the sad state of the Greek Church under the tyranny of the Turks: that the expences of so long a journey had involved him in debts which had been contracted on the credit of what he and his family, being nine in number, had expected to receive: and that the state of public affairs had been a hindrance to obtaining the relief, which they had anticipated. The document is dated August 18, 1715. In the petition the Church of England is described as "for orthodoxy and piety, famed over the earth." With the Petition of Arsenius is coupled the Letter from the Patriarch of Alexandria, to Queen Anne, in which a most deplorable account is given of