To correct these errors the celebrated Nikon, who was Patriarch in the time of Tsar Alexis, father of Peter the Great, ordered all the old liturgical books and the old Icons to be called in, and new ones to be distributed; but the clergy and the people resisted.  Believing these “Nikonian novelties” to be heretical, they clung to their old Icons, their old missals and their old religious customs as the sole anchors of safety which could save the Faithful from drifting to perdition.  In vain the Patriarch assured the people that the change was a return to the ancient forms still preserved in Greece and Constantinople.  “The Greek Church,” it was replied, “is no longer free from heresy.  Orthodoxy has become many-coloured from the violence of the Turkish Mahomet; and the Greeks, under the sons of Hagar, have fallen away from the ancient traditions.”

An anathema, formally pronounced by an Ecclesiastical Council against these Nonconformists, had no more effect than the admonitions of the Patriarch.  They persevered in their obstinacy, and refused to believe that the blessed saints and holy martyrs who had used the ancient forms had not prayed and crossed themselves aright.  “Not those holy men of old, but the present Patriarch and his counsellors must be heretics.”  “Woe to us!  Woe to us!” cried the monks of Solovetsk when they received the new Liturgies.  “What have you done with the Son of God?  Give him back to us!  You have changed Isus [the old Russian form of Jesus] into Iisus!  It is fearful not only to commit such a sin, but even to think of it!” And the sturdy monks shut their gates, and defied Patriarch, Council, and Tsar for seven long years, till the monastery was taken by an armed force.

The decree of excommunication pronounced by the Ecclesiastical Council placed the Nonconformists beyond the pale of the Church, and the civil power undertook the task of persecuting them.  Persecution had of course merely the effect of confirming the victims in their belief that the Church and the Tsar had become heretical.  Thousands fled across the frontier and settled in the neighbouring countries—­Poland, Russia, Sweden, Austria, Turkey, the Caucasus, and Siberia.  Others concealed themselves in the northern forests and the densely wooded region near the Polish frontier, where they lived by agriculture or fishing, and prayed, crossed themselves and buried their dead according to the customs of their forefathers.  The northern forests were their favourite place of refuge.  Hither flocked many of those who wished to keep themselves pure and undefiled.  Here the more learned men among the Nonconformists—­well acquainted with Holy Writ, with fragmentary translations from the Greek Fathers, and with the more important decisions of the early Ecumenical Councils—­wrote polemical and edifying works for the confounding of heretics and the confirming of true believers.  Hence were sent out in all directions zealous missionaries, in