the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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revolution. The State itself alone administers the whole of the external life of man,
while the Church knows only the exclusively spiritual needs of believers, and
everything that pertains to prayer. We greatly rejoice at the decree on the separation
of the Church from the State, but unfortunately the Government does not believe in
the sincerity of our joy.
To a question on the justice of the authorities of the USSR and its
strengthening, Bishop Victor replied:
I recognize its justice, but only on condition that this strengthening does not
restrict and repress our Orthodox faith.
Bishop Victor was loyal to the civil authorities. But he understood this
loyalty in a quite different way from Metropolitan Sergius, as he made clear
in the epistle he wrote to his flock on February 28 / March 12, 1928 (new
calendar): "Judge for yourselves: what significance, for example, can the bans
of Catholics, Protestants, livingchurchmen and others have for an Orthodox
priest if they were to think of applying them to us? None at all. It’s exactly the
same here. The only difference is that the Catholics, Protestants and others fell
away earlier from the Church of God, while the apostates (antichurchmen)
have only now, in our time, been deceived by the devil, ‘who has taken them
captive at his will’ (II Timothy 2.26). And this fall of theirs is not little and not
secret, but very great and evident to all those who have sense (I Corinthians
11.16). It was revealed in the well-known 'appeal' of July 16/29 and the bold
destruction of the Orthodox Church which followed it. The 'appeal' is a
disgusting sale of that which cannot be sold and is priceless - that is, our
spiritual freedom in Christ (John 8.36); it is their attempt, contrary to the word
of God, to unite that which cannot be united - the portion of the sinner with
the work of God, God and Mammon (Matthew 6.24), light and darkness (II
Corinthians 6.14-18).
“The apostates have transformed the Church of God from a Grace-filled
union of the salvation of man from sin and eternal destruction into a political
organization, which they have united with the organization of civil power in
the service of this world which lies in evil (I John 5.19). The loyalty of
individual believers to the civil authorities is one thing, and the inner
dependence of the Church herself on the civil authorities is quite another. In
the first situation the Church preserves her spiritual freedom in Christ, while
the believers become confessors under persecution for the faith; in the second
situation, she (the Church) is merely an obedient weapon for the realization of
the political ideas of the civil power, while the confessors for the faith are here
state criminals. We see all this in the activity of Metropolitan Sergius, who by
dint of his new relationship to the civil authorities has been forced to forget
the canons of the Orthodox Church, and in spite of them he has removed all
the confessor-bishops from their sees, considering them to be state criminals,
and in their place he has of his own will appointed other bishops who were
not and are not now recognized by the believing people. For Metropolitan
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