The example of the Primitives, called "Quakers," has given rise in
Pennsylvania to a new society, in a district which it calls Euphrates.
This is the sect of Dunkers or Dumpers, a sect much more secluded from
the world than Penn's; a sort of religious hospitallers, all clothed
uniformly. Married persons are not permitted to reside in the city of
Euphrates: they reside in the country, which they cultivate. The public
treasury supplies all their wants in times of scarcity. This society
administers baptism only to adults. It rejects the doctrine of original
sin as impious, and that of the eternity of punishment as barbarous. The
purity of their lives permits them not to imagine that God will torment
His creatures cruelly or eternally. Gone astray in a corner of the new
world, far from the great flock of the Catholic Church, they are, up to
the present hour, notwithstanding this unfortunate error, the most just
and most inimitable of men.
_Quarrel between the Greek and Latin Churches in Asia and Europe._
It has been a matter of lamentation to all good men for nearly fourteen
centuries that the Greek and Latin Churches have always been rivals, and
that the robe of Jesus Christ, which was without a seam, has been
continually rent asunder. This opposition is perfectly natural. Rome and
Constantinople hate each other. When masters cherish a mutual aversion,
their dependents entertain no mutual regard. The two communions have
disputed on the superiority of language, the antiquity of sees, on
learning, eloquence, and power.
It is certain that, for a long time, the Greeks possessed all the
advantage. They boasted that they had been the masters of the Latins,
and that they had taught them everything. The Gospels were written in
Greek. There was not a doctrine, a rite, a mystery, a usage, which was
not Greek; from the word "baptism" to the word "eucharist" all was
Greek. No fathers of the Church were known except among the Greeks till
St. Jerome, and even he was not a Roman, but a Dalmatian. St. Augustine,
who flourished soon after St. Jerome, was an African. The seven great
ecumenical councils were held in Greek cities: the bishops of Rome were
never present at them, because they were acquainted only with their own
Latin language, which was already exceedingly corrupted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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