“_Seleznevtschini._ This sect are, in modern time, precisely what the Strigolniks originally were. They are Jews in principle; maintain the divine obligation of circumcision; observe the Jewish Sabbath, and the ceremonial law. There are many of them about Tula, on the river Kuma, and in other provinces, and they are very numerous in Poland and Turkey, where, having left the Christian faith, they have joined the seed of Abraham, according to the flesh, in rejecting the Messiah and the gospel.”[1028] The ancient Russian name of this people was _Strigolniks_. Dr. Murdock gives the following account of them:— “It is common to date the origin of sectarians in the Russian church, about the middle of the seventeenth century, in the time of the patriarch Nikon. But according to the Russian annals, there existed schismatics in the Russian church two hundred years before the days of Nikon; and the disturbances which took place in his time, only proved the means of augmenting their numbers, and of bringing them forward into public view. The earliest of these schismatics first appeared in Novogorod, early in the fifteenth century, under the name of _Strigolniks_. “A Jew named Horie preached a mixture of Judaism and Christianity; and proselyted two priests, Denis and Alexie, who gained a vast number of followers. This sect was so numerous, that a national council was called, towards the close of the fifteenth century, to oppose it. Soon afterwards, one Karp, an excommunicated deacon, joined the _Strigolniks_; and accused the higher clergy of selling the office of priesthood, and of so far corrupting the church, that the Holy Ghost was withdrawn from it. He was a very successful propagator of this sect.”[1029] It is very customary with historians to speak of Sabbath-keeping Christians in one of the following ways: 1. To name their observance of the seventh day distinctly, but to represent them as turning from Christ to Moses and the ceremonial law; or, 2. To speak of their Sabbatarian principles in so vague a manner that the reader will not be likely to suspect them of being Sabbath-keepers. Pinkerton speaks of these Russian Sabbath-keepers after the first of these methods; Murdock, after the second. It is plain that Murdock did not regard these people as rejecting Christ, and it is certain from Pinkerton that the two writers are speaking of the same people.