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Alexei Khomiakov
[no date specified]
Palmer's objections inapplicable to the whole Orthodox Eastern Church * They refer to mere local and temporary defects * No books yet received from Palmer
Most Reverend and Dear Sir, —
Accept my thanks for your kind, though (as you call it) grumbling letter, and pray excuse the extreme indiscretion of the commission I had burdened you with. My excuse is in my total ignorance of foreign life and the supposition that intercourse between England and France or Belgium was more frequent and easy than I now find it to be. But I have at last found means to put you out of any difficulty or inconvenience on that account. Only be so good as to send the letter here enclosed, with the essay and cheque, to the enclosed address without even a word of your writing, and all I want will be done. I will add a request that you should bear me no ill-will for my indiscretion, considering the extreme difficulty of my position, which you can only partially guess from some words of my preceding letter.
I was wrong, perhaps, in supposing that your mind was labouring under some irritation or fatigue, and yet pardon me if I still continue to suppose that something of that feeling is indeed working in you, though you are not, perhaps, aware of it, and is driving you in a direction which I cannot consider otherwise than erroneous. Your letter has shown me more clearly than ever all the difficulties against which you have been and are still struggling, and the intricacy of the questions which have been for a long time agitating your conscience, but I cannot consider them as being insoluble in a straightforward way. Do not suppose that, when I have been speaking rather lightly about the ritual difference existing between Greece and Russia in the admission of Latins and Protestants, I was paying no attention to the feelings and conscientious doubts of the convert. You seem to indicate as much by saying that a Sacrament is operated on a man, and not on a block. A man must know whether he is to ask for a grace, or to thank God for the grace received and pray for strength to continue in it.
I must say that there is an evident misunderstanding in the question. The Russian Church as well as the Eastern one (the whole Catholic Church) does not admit that the full grace of Baptism can have been conferred by schismatic Baptism. The only difference is, that the Russian considers the rite as fulfilled, the Greek finds the rite uncanonical, and considers its more canonical repetition as commendable. Both suppose in the convert the conviction that he has not yet received the Grace of Baptism and that he is to pray for the full grace of the Sacrament which he receives either by the repetition of the Rite or by the prayers of reconciliation giving power to a rite otherwise powerless. In both cases, the feelings and mental action are exactly the same, and the difficulty melts into nothing, and yet, it seems to me, that it is the only serious one which affects your particular case. The fact which you advance against the Russian Church (or I should rather say against the Russian Eparchy of the Catholic Church) is unfortunately a true one, but you admit it to be a fact and not a principle, and therefore not binding upon any conscience, and by the same reason, quite out of the domain of Faith. If the fact has been working even for a hundred years or more, well -- this cannot have changed its nature -- it is still nothing but a fact. The papacy has been for more than two hundred years the monopoly of Italian blood . This is certainly an anti-ecclesiastical fact, but it is no principle, and cannot be adduced against Latinism, and yet, it is far more important than the tyrannical policy of the Russian State, as you, not without some appearance of reason, call it. The one who affects the whole community, the other affects only an eparchy. Whether the Russian hierarchy has been, or has not been, deceived into an undue subjection by the semblance of protection, is an historical and not an ecclesiastical fact, and has nothing in common with the principles of Anglican submission to the State, so long as the Russian Church does not arrogate to itself an independent position in the Catholic Church. Your moral sense is revolted, and well it may be, by the visible action, or rather, inaction, of the different eparchies of the Catholic Church. The feeling is just and reasonable, but it must not bear away your impartial reason. A Christian, dear sir, belongs to his local church only in his outward life (Discipline, Rite, etc.). In his inward life, he belongs to the universality of the Catholic Church and is in no way affected by the vices of the local church's hierarchy, which he counteracts in a mild and peaceful way, as long as the local church itself has not run into separatism, as the Latin See, or rather, the whole of the Western Communions have done. The ways of God are inscrutable, and perhaps it may not be sinful to suppose that the Russian hierarchy has been allowed to fall into a dependent situation until the time when the other local churches, having regained their full dignity and action, can stand forth as her equals in every respect, lest she should have fallen into the temptation of undue pride and anti-ecclesiastical ambition. This supposition (a false one, perhaps, for where is the man who is able to judge of the unrevealed designs of God?) does not seem to me quite unreasonable. Do not, dear sir, ascribe an undue importance to secondary facts, and do not shut your eyes to the evident separatism of the Latin west, which is the only true plague of humanity, as I hope to have shown in my Essay.
I am sorry I can say nothing about your tracts, either in the Greek or the English edition. The very simple reason of my silence is that I have not as yet received them. It is, as you may see, no easy thing to send books over to Russia if their contents are not agreeable to our ecclesiastical or political rules. The thing becomes still more difficult if the books bear my address. Such is the reason why I must beg of you most insistently in no case to return my Essay to Russia, but to send it as soon as possible with the enclosed letter to Paris by the subjoined direction, without even giving me any written answer about the whole concern (at least by post). Accept, dearest sir, the assurance of the sincere respect and affection of you most devoted,
Alexei Khomiakov
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