Philip Schaff · 40 of 60

The Orthodox Confession of the Eastern Church.

THE ORTHODOX CONFESSION OF THE EASTERN CHURCH. A.D. 1643.

[The Orthodox Confession of Faith of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East (also called Catechism from its method) was drawn up by Peter Mogilas, Metropolitan of Kieff, the father of Russian theology (d. 1647), or under his direction, and was revised and adopted by the Græco-Russian Synod at Jassy, 1643, signed by the Eastern Patriarchs, and approved again by the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672. It sets forth the faith of the Eastern Church in distinction both from the Latin and Protestant Churches. We print the introduction and doctrinal part in full, but omit Parts II. and III., which contain an exposition of the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, and the Ten Commandments, and belong to Ethics rather than Symbolics. In the division of the Decalogue the Greek Church sides with the Reformed against the Roman and the Lutheran. Comp. History, pp. 58 sqq.

The modern Greek text, with the semiofficial Latin translation of Panaglota, appeared first at Amsterdam, 1662. It is here reprinted from Kimmel's Monumenta Fidei Ecclesiæ Orientalis, Pars I. pp. 56–203. On other editions and textual variations, see his Prolegomena, p. lxii.]