All this we find exemplified in the history of the Priestless People.  When it was found that the world did not come to an end, and that the rigorous system of persecution was relaxed, the less excitable natures returned to their homes, and resumed their old mode of life; and when Peter the Great made his politic concessions, many who had declared him to be Antichrist came to suspect that he was really not so black as he was painted.  This idea struck deep root in a religious community near Lake Onega (Vuigovski Skit) which had received special privileges on condition of supplying labourers for the neighbouring mines; and here was developed a new theory which opened up a way of reconciliation with the Government.  By a more attentive study of Holy Writ and ancient books it was discovered that the reign of Antichrist would consist of two periods.  In the former, the Son of Destruction would reign merely in the spiritual sense, and the Faithful would not be much molested; in the latter, he would reign visibly in the flesh, and true believers would be subjected to the most frightful persecution.  The second period, it was held, had evidently not yet arrived, for the Faithful now enjoyed “a time of freedom, and not of compulsion or oppression.”  Whether this theory is strictly in accordance with Apocalyptic prophecy and patristic theology may be doubted, but it fully satisfied those who had already arrived at the conclusion by a different road, and who sought merely a means of justifying their position.  Certain it is that very many accepted it, and determined to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, or, in secular language, to pray for the Tsar and to pay their taxes.

This ingenious compromise was not accepted by all the Priestless People.  On the contrary, many of them regarded it as a woeful backsliding—­a new device of the Evil One; and among these irreconcilables was a certain peasant called Theodosi, a man of little education, but of remarkable intellectual power and unusual strength of character.  He raised anew the old fanaticism by his preaching and writings—­widely circulated in manuscript—­and succeeded in founding a new sect in the forest region near the Polish frontier.

The Priestless Nonconformists thus fell into two sections; the one, called Pomortsi,* accepted at least a partial reconciliation with the civil power; the other, called Theodosians, after their founder, held to the old opinions, and refused to regard the Tsar otherwise than as Antichrist.

The word Pomortsi means “those who live near the seashore.”  It is commonly applied to the inhabitants of the Northern provinces—­that is, those who live near the shore of the White Sea, the only maritime frontier that Russia possessed previous to the conquests of Peter the Great.