CHAP. they might relate with malicious joy, how the XLVII, decrees of Chalcedon had been inspired and re

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formed by the emperor Marcian and his virgin bride. The prevailing faction will naturally inculcate the duty of submission, nor is it less natural that dissenters should feel and assert the principles of freedom. Under the rod of persecution, the Nestorians and Monophysites degenerated into rebels and fugitives; and the most ancient and useful allies of Rome were taught to consider the emperor not as the chief, but as the enemy, of the Christians. Language, the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind, soon discriminated the sectaries of the East, by a peculiar and perpetual

badge, which abolished the means of intercourse Perpetual and the hope of reconciliation. The long doof the ori- minion of the Greeks, their colonies, and, above ental sects. all, their eloquence, had propagated a language

separation

doubtless the most perfect that has been contrived by the art of man. Yet the body of the people, both in Syria and Egypt, still persevered in the use of their national idioms; with this difference however, that the Coptic was confined to the rude and illiterate peasants of the Nile, while the Syriac, from the mountains of Assyria to the Red Sea, was adapted to the

XLVII.

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higher topics of poetry and argument. Arme- CHAP. nia and Abyssinia were infected by the speech or learning of the Greeks; and their barbaric tongues, which had been revived in the studies of modern Europe, were unintelligible to the inhabitants of the Roman empire. The Syriac and the Coptic, the Armenian and the Ethiopic, are consecrated in the service of their respective churches; and their theology is enriched by domestic versions' both of the scriptures and of the most popular fathers. After a period of thirteen hundred and sixty years, the spark of controversy, first kindled by a sermon of Nestorius, still burns in the bosom of the East, and the hostile communions still maintain the faith and discipline of their founders. In the most abject state of ignorance, poverty, and servitude, the Nestorians and Monophysites reject the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and cherish the toleration of their Turkish masters, which allows them to anathematize, on one hand, St. Cyril and the synod of Ephesus; on the other, Pope Leo and the council of Chalcedon. The weight which they cast into the downfal of the eastern empire demands our notice; and the reader may be amused with the various prospects of, I. The Nestorians. II. The Jaco

* I shall not enrich my ignorance with the spoils of Simon, Walton, Mill, Wetstein, Assemannus, Ludolphus, La Croze, whom I have consulted with some care. It appears, 1. That, of all the versions which are celebrated by the fathers, it is doubtful whether any are now extant in their pristine integrity. 2. That the Syriac has the best claim; and that the consent of the oriental sects is a proof that is more ancient than their schism.

CHAP. bites." III. The Maronites. IV. The ArmeXLVII. nians. V. The Copts; and VI. The Abyssi

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I. THE NESTORIANS,

nians. To the three former, the Syriac is common; but of the latter, each is discriminated by the use of a national idiom. Yet the modern natives of Armenia and Abyssinia would be incapable of conversing with their ancestors; and the christians of Egypt and Syria, who reject the religion, have adopted the language, of the Arabians. The lapse of time has seconded the sacerdotal arts; and in the East, as well as in the West, the Deity is addressed in an obsolete tongue, unknown to the majority of the congregation.

I. Both in his native and his episcopal province, the heresy of the unfortunate Nestorius was speedily obliterated. The oriental bishops, who at Ephesus had resisted to his face the arrogance of Cyril, were mollified by his tardy concessions. The same prelates, or their successors, subscribed, not without a murmur, the decrees of Chalcedon; the power of the Monophysites reconciled them with the catholics in the conformity of passion, of interest, and insensibility of belief; and their last reluctant sigh was breathed in the defence of the three chapters. Their dissenting brethren, less moderate,

On the account of the Monophysites and Nestorians, I am deeply indebted to the Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana of Joseph Simon Assemannus. That learned Maronite was despatched in the year 1715, by Pope Clement XI, to visit the monasteries of Egypt and Syria in search of MSS. His four folio volumes, published at Rome, in 1719-1728, contain a part only, though perhaps the most valuable, of his extensive project. As a native and as a scholar, he possessed the Syriac literature: and, though a dependant of Rome, be wishes to be moderate and candid,

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or more sincere, were crushed by the penal CHAP laws; and as early as the reign of Justinian, it XLVII. became difficult to find a church of Nestorians within the limits of the Roman empire. Beyond those limits they had discovered a new world, in which they might hope for liberty, and aspire to conquest. In Persia, notwithstanding the resistance of the Magi, Christianity had struck a deep root, and the nations of the East reposed under its salutary shade. The catholic, or primate, resided in the capital: in his synods, and in their diocesses, his metropolitans, bishops, and clergy, represented the pomp and honour of a regular hierarchy: they rejoiced in the increase of proselytes, who were converted from the Zendavesta to the Gospel, from the secular to the monastic life; and their zeal was stimulated by the presence of an artful and formidable enemy. The Persian church had been founded by the missionaries of Syria; and their language, discipline, and doctrine, were closely interwoven with its original frame. The catholics were elected and ordained by their own suffragans; but their filial dependence on the patriarchs of Antioch is attested by the canons of the oriental church. In the Persian school

The

* See the Arabic canons of Nice in the translation of Abraham Ec. chelensis, No. 37, 38, 39, 40; Concil. tom. ii, p. 335, 336, edit. Venet. These vulgar titles, Nicene and Arabic, are both apocryphal. council of Nice enacted no more than twenty canons, (Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. l. i, c. 8); and the remainder, seventy or eighty, were collected from the synods of the Greek church. The Syriac edition of Maruthas is no longer extant, (Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental. tom. i, p. 195; tom. iii, p. 74), and the Arabic version is marked with many recent interpolations. Yet this code contains many curious relics of ecclesiastical discipline; and since it is equally revered by all the eastern communions,

CHAP. of Edessa, the rising generations of the faithful imbibed their theological idiom; they studied in the Syriac version the ten thousand volumes of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and they revered the apostolic faith and holy martyrdom of his disciple Nestorius, whose person and language were equally unknown to the nations beyond the Tigris. The first indelible lesson of Ibas, bishop of Edessa, taught them to execrate the Egyptians, who, in the synod of Ephesus, had impiously confounded the two natures of Christ. The flight of the masters and scholars, who were twice expelled from the Athens of Syria, dispersed a crowd of missionaries, inflamed by the double zeal of religion and revenge. And the rigid unity of the Monophysites, who, under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, had invaded the thrones of the East, provoked their antagonists, in a land of freedom, to avow a moral, rather than a physical, union of the two persons of Christ. Since the first preaching of the gospel, the Sasanian kings beheld, with an eye of suspicion, a race of aliens and apostates, who had embraced the religion, and who might favour the cause, of the hereditary foes of their country. The royal edicts had often prohibited their dangerous correspondence with the Syrian clergy; the progress of the schism was