from the throne, the bishops of the east were
released from their occasional conformity, the
Roman faith was more firmly re-planted by the
orthodox successors of Bardanes, and the fine
problems of the incarnation were forgotten in the
more popular and visible quarrel of the worship of
images.P

Yet the

that has been contrived by the art of man. 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 higher topics of poetry and argument. Armenia 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 Æthiopic, 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 the 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 downfall of the eastern empire demands our notice, and the reader may be amused with the various prospects of, I. The Nestorians. II. The Jacobites." III. The Maronites. IV. The Armenians. V. The Copts; and, VI. The Abyssinians. 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.

Before the end of the seventh cenUnion of the Greek and Latin tury, the creed of the incarnation, churches. which had been defined at Rome and Constantinople, was uniformly preached in the remote islands of Britain and Ireland; the same ideas were entertained, or rather the same words were repeated, by all the christians whose liturgy was performed in the Greek or Latin tongue. Their numbers, and visible splendour, bestowed an imperfect claim to the appellation of catholics: but in the east they were marked with the less honourable name of Melchites, or royalists; of men, whose faith instead of resting on the basis of Scrip- | ture, reason, or tradition, had been established, and was still maintained, by the arbitrary power of a temporal monarch. Their adversaries might allege the words of the fathers of Constantinople, who profess themselves the slaves of the king; and they might relate, with malicious joy, how the decrees of Chalcedon had been inspired and reformed 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 and the

Perpetual separation of the oriental sects.

hope of reconciliation. The long dominion of the Greeks, their colonies, and above all, their eloquence, had propagated a language doubtless the most perfect

P The history of Monothelitism may be found in the Acts of the Synods of Rome (tom. vii. p. 77-395. 601-608.) aud Constantinople, (p. 609-1429.) Baronius extracted some original documents from the Vatican library; and his chronology is rectified by the diligence of Pagi. Even Dupin (Bibliotheque Eccles. tom. vi. p. 57-71.) and Basnage (Hist. de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 541-555.) afford a tolerable abridgment.

१

In the Lateran synod of 679, Wilfrid, an Anglo-Saxon bishop, sub. scribed pro omni Aquilonari parte Britanniæ et Hiberniæ, quæ ab Anglorum et Brittonum, necnon Scotorum et Pictorum gentibus coleban. tur. (Eddius, in Vit. St. Wilfrid. c. 31. apud Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p. 88.) Theodore (magnæ insula Britanniæ archiepiscopus et philosophus) was long expected at Rome, (Council. tom. vii. p. 714.) but he con. tented himself with holding (A. D. 680.) his provincial synod of Hat. field, in which he received the decrees of pope Martin and the first Lateran council against the monothelites. (Concil. tom. vii. p. 597, &c.) Theodore, a monk of Tarsus in Cilicia, had been named to the primacy of Britain by pope Vitalian, (A. D. 668. See Baronius and Pagi,) whose esteem for his learning and piety was tainted by some distrust of his national character-ne quid contrarium veritatis fidei, Græcorum more, in ecclesiam cui præesset introduceret. The Cilician was sent from Rome to Canterbury under the tuition of an African guide. (Beda Hist. Eccles. Anglorum, 1. iv. c. 1.) He adhered to the Roman doctrine; and the same creed of the incarnation has been uniformly transmitted from Theodore to the modern primates, whose understanding is perhaps seldom engaged with that abstruse mystery.

This name, unknown till the tenth century, appears to be of Syriac origin. It was invented by the Jacobites, and eagerly adopted by the Nestorians and Mahometans: but it was accepted without shame by

the catholics, and is frequently used in the Annals of Eutychius. (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient, tom. ii. p. 507, &c. tom. iii, p. 355. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandrin. p. 119.) 'Hμers dovλor Tou Bao News, was the acclamation of the fathers of Constantinople. (Concil. tom. vii. p. 765.) s The Syriac, which the natives revere as the primitive language, was divided into three dialects. 1. The Aramaan, as it was refined at Edessa and the cities of Mesopotamia. 2. The Palestine, which was used in Jerusalem, Damascus, and the rest of Syria, 3. The Nabathaan, the rustic idiom of the mountains of Assyria and the villages of Irak (Gregor. Abulpharag. Hist. Dynast. p. 11.) On the Syriac, see Ebed-Jesu, (Asseman. tom. iii. p. 326, &c.) whose prejudice alone could prefer it to the Arabic.

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 it is more an cient than their schism.

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 1710-1728, 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 dependent of Rome, he wishes to be moderate and candid.

:

sole masters of

1. The NESTO- I. Both in his native and his episco- | than a physical, union of the two persons of Christ. RIANS, pal 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, 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, or more sincere, were crushed by the penal laws; and as early as the reign of Justinian, it 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 dioceses, 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 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

x 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. The council of Nice enacted no more than twenty canons. (Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. 1. 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, it was probably finished before the schism of the Nestorians and Jacobites. (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom, xi. p. 363-367.)

Since the first preaching of the gospel, the Sassa-
nian kings beheld, with an eye of suspicion, a race
of aliens and apostates, who had embraced the re-
ligion, and who might favour the cause, of the here-
ditary foes of their country. The royal edicts had
often prohibited their dangerous correspondence
with the Syrian clergy; the progress of the schism
was grateful to the jealous pride of Perozes, and
he listened to the eloquence of an artful prelate,
who painted Nestorius as the friend of Persia, and
urged him to secure the fidelity of his christian sub-
jects, by granting a just preference to the victims
and enemies of the Roman tyrant. The Nestorians
composed a large majority of the clergy and people;
they were encouraged by the smile, and armed with
the sword, of despotism; yet many of their weaker
brethren were startled at the thought of breaking
loose from the communion of the christian world,
and the blood of seven thousand seven hundred
Monophysites or catholics, confirmed the uniformity
of faith and discipline in the churches of Persia.
Their ecclesiastical institutions are distinguished
by a liberal principle of reason, or at least of policy:
the austerity of the cloister was relaxed and gradu-
ally forgotten; houses of charity were endowed for
the education of orphans and found-
lings; the law of celibacy, so forcibly
recommended to the Greeks and Latins,
was disregarded by the Persian clergy; and the
number of the elect was multiplied by the public
and reiterated nuptials of the priests, the bishops,
and even the patriarch himself. To this standard
of natural and religious freedom, myriads of fugi-
tives resorted from all the provinces of the eastern
empire; the narrow bigotry of Justinian was pu-
nished by the emigration of his most industrious
subjects; they transported into Persia the arts both
of peace and war: and those who deserved the fa-
vour, were promoted in the service, of a discerning
monarch. The arms of Nushirvan, and his fiercer
grandson, were assisted with advice, and money, and
troops, by the desperate sectaries who still lurked
in their native cities of the east; their zeal was re-
warded with the gift of the catholic churches; but
when those cities and churches were recovered by
Heraclius, their open profession of treason and
heresy compelled them to seek a refuge in the realm
of their foreign ally. But the seeming tranquillity
of the Nestorians was often endangered, and some-
times overthrown. They were involved in the com-
mon evils of oriental despotism: their enmity to
Rome could not always atone for their attachment
to the gospel: and a colony of three hundred thou-

Persia,
A. D. 500, &c.

sand Jacobites, the captives of Apamea and Antioch, I and even of ordination; and the fame of Prester or were permitted to erect an hostile altar in the face Presbyter John has long amused the credulity of of the catholic, and in the sunshine of the court. Europe. The royal convert was indulged in the use of a portable altar; but he despatched an em

In his last treaty, Justinian introduced some con

China, &c.

a

ditions which tended to enlarge and fortify the tole-bassy to the patriarch, to inquire how, in the season ration of christianity in Persia. The emperor, ignorant of the rights of conscience, was incapable of pity or esteem for the heretics who denied the authority of the holy synods: but he flattered himself that they would gradually perceive the temporal benefits of union with the empire and the church of Rome; and if he failed in exciting their gratitude, he might hope to provoke the jealousy of their sovereign. In a later age, the Lutherans have been burnt at Paris and protected in Germany, by the superstition and policy of the most christian king. Their missions in The desire of gaining souls for God, Tartary, India, and subjects for the church, has exA. D. 500-1200. cited in every age the diligence of the christian priests. From the conquest of Persia they carried their spiritual arms to the north, the east, and the south; and the simplicity of the gospel was fashioned and painted with the colours of the Syriac theology. In the sixth century, according to the report of a Nestorian traveller, christianity was successfully preached to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites: the barbaric churches, from the gulf of Persia to the Caspian sea, were almost infinite; and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number and sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper coast of Malabar, and the isles of the ocean, Socotora, and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing multitude of christians, and the bishops and clergy of those sequestered regions derived their ordination from the catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age, the zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the Selinga. They exposed a metaphysical creed to those illiterate shepherds: to those sanguinary warriors they recommended humanity and repose. Yet a khan, whose power they vainly magnified, is said to have received at their hands the rites of baptism,

See the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes, or the Indian navigator, I. iii. p. 178, 179. l. xi. p. 337. The entire work, of which some curious extracts may be found in Photius, (Cod. xxxvi. p. 9, 10. edit. Hoeschel.) Thevenot, (in the first part of his Relations des Voyages, &c.) and Fabricius, (Bibliot. Græc. 1. iii. c. 25. tom. ii. p. 603-617.) has been published by Father Montfaucon at Paris, 1707, in the Nova Collectio Patrum, (tom ii. p. 113-346.) It was the design of the author to confute the impious heresy of those who maintain that the earth is a globe, and not a flat oblong table, as it is represented in the Scriptures, (1. ii. p. 138.) But the nonsense of the monk is mingled with the practical knowledge of the traveller, who performed his voyage, A. D. 522, and published his book at Alexandria, A. D. 547. (1. ii. p. 140, 141. Montfaucon, Præfat. c. 2.) The Nestorianism of Cosmas, unknown to his learned editor, was detected by La Croze, (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 40-55.) and is confirmed by Assemanni. (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 605, 606.)

b In its long progress to Mosul, Jerusalem, Rome, &c. the story of Prester John evaporated in a monstrous fable, of which some features have been borrowed from the Lama of Thibet, (Hist. Genealogique des Tartares, P. ii. p. 42. Hist. de Gengiscan, p. 31, &c.) and were ignor. antly transferred by the Portuguese to the emperor of Abyssinia. (Ludolph. Hist. Æthiop. Comment. I. ii. c. 1.) Yet it is probable that

of Lent, he should abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate the eucharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine. In their progress by sea and land, the Nestorians entered China by the port of Canton and the northern residence of Sigan. Unlike the senators of Rome, who assumed with a smile the characters of priests and augurs, the mandarins, who affect in public the reason of philosophers, are devoted in private to every mode of popular superstition. They cherished and they confounded the gods of Palestine and of India; but the propagation of christianity awakened the jealousy of the state, and after a short vicissitude of favour and persecution, the foreign sect expired in ignorance and oblivion. Under the reign of the caliphs, the Nestorian church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and Cyprus; and their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to surpass the Greek and Latin communions. Twentyfive metropolitans or archbishops composed their hierarchy, but several of these were dispensed, by the distance and danger of the way, from the duty of personal attendance, on the easy condition that every six years they should testify their faith and obedience to the catholic or patriarch of Babylon, a vague appellation, which has been successively applied to the royal seats of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. These remote branches are long since withered, and the old patriarchal trunk is now divided by the Elijahs of Mosul, the representatives, almost in lineal descent, of the genuine and primitive succession, the Josephs of Amida, who are reconciled to the church of Rome, and the Simeons of Van or Ormia, whose revolt at the head of forty thousand families, was promoted in the sixteenth century by the Sophis of Persia. The number of three hundred thousand is allowed for the whole body of the Nestorians, who, under the name of Chaldeans or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful nation of eastern antiquity. According to the legend of anti- The christians of quity, the gospel was preached in India, India by St. Thomas.s At the end of

e

St. Thomas in
A. D. 883.

in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Nestorian christianity was professed in the horde of Keraites. (D'Herbelot, p. 256. 915, 959. Assemanni, tom. iv. p. 468-504.)

e The christianity of China, between the seventh and thirteenth century, is invincibly proved by the consent of Chinese, Arabian, Syriac, and Latin evidence. (Assemanni, Biblioth. Orient. tom. iv. p. 502-552. Mem. de l'Academie des Inscript. tom. xxx. p. 802-819.) The inscription of Sigansu, which describes the fortunes of the Nes torian church, from the first mission, A. D. 636, to the current year 781, is accused of forgery by La Croze, Voltaire, &c. who become the dupes of their own cunning, while they are afraid of a Jesuitical fraud.

d Jacobitæ et Nestorianæ plures quam Græci et Latini. Jacoba Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. 1. ii. c. 76. p. 1093. in the Gesta Dei per Francos. The numbers are given by Thomasin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 172. e The division of the patriarchate may be traced in the Bibliotheca Orient. of Assemanni, tom. i. p. 523–549. tom. ii. p. 457, &c. tom. iii. p. 603. p. 621–623. tom. iv. p. 164-169. p. 423. p. 622-629, &c. f The pompous language of Rome, on the submission of a Nestorian patriarch, is elegantly represented in the seventh book of Fra-Paolo, Babylon, Nineveh, Arbela, and the trophies of Alexander, Tauris, and Ecbatana, the Tigris and Indus,

The Indian missionary St. Thomas, an apostle, a Manichæan,

was the fem

ntal.com and em of the bar Was assas

arts of

A. D. 518.

of the Jacobite church; but the order of the hierarchy is relaxed or dissolved, and the greater part of their dioceses is confined to the neighbourhood of the Euphrates and the Tigris. The cities of Aleppo and Amida, which are often visited by the patriarch, contain some wealthy merchants and industrious mechanics, but the multitude derive their scanty sustenance from their daily labour: and poverty, as well as superstition, may impose their excessive fasts: five annual lents, during which, both the clergy and laity abstain not only from flesh or eggs, but even from the taste of wine, of oil, and of fish. Their present numbers are esteemed from fifty to fourscore thousand souls, the remnant of a populous church, which has gradually decreased under the oppression of twelve centuries. Yet in that long period, some strangers of merit have been converted to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was the father of Abulpharagius primate of the east, so truly eminent both in his life and death. In his life, he was an elegant writer of the Syriac and Arabic tongues, a poet, physician, and historian, a subtle philosopher, and a moderate divine. In his death, his funeral was attended by his rival the Nestorian patriarch, with a train of Greeks and Armenians, who forgot their disputes, and mingled their tears over the grave of an enemy. The sect which was honoured by the virtues of Abulpharagius appears, however, to sink below the level of their Nestorian brethren. The superstition of the Jacobites is more abject, their fasts more rigid, their intestine divisions are more numerous, and their doctors (as far as I can measure the degrees of nonsense) are more remote from the precincts of reason. Something may possibly be allowed for the rigour of the Monophysite theology; much more for the superior influence of the monastic order. In Syria, in Egypt, in Ethiopia, the Jacobite monks have ever been distinguished by the austerity of their penance and the absurdity of their legends. Alive or dead they are worshipped as the favourites of the Deity; the crosier of bishop and patriarch is reserved for their venerable hands; and they assume the government of men, while they are yet reeking with the habits and prejudices of the cloister."

passion; each party was the more astonished that
their blind antagonist could dispute on so trifling a
difference; the tyrant of Syria enforced the belief
of his creed, and his reign was polluted with the
blood of three hundred and fifty monks, who were
slain, not perhaps without provocation
or resistance, under the walls of Apa-
mea. The successor of Anastasius replanted the
orthodox standard in the east: Severus fled into
Egypt; and his friend, the eloquent Xenaias," who
had escaped from the Nestorians of Persia, was
suffocated in his exile by the Melchites of Paphla-
gonia. Fifty-four bishops were swept from their
thrones, eight hundred ecclesiastics were cast into
prison," and notwithstanding the ambiguous favour
of Theodora, the oriental flocks, deprived of their
shepherds, must insensibly have been either famish-
ed or poisoned. In this spiritual distress, the ex-
piring faction was revived, and united, and perpe-
tuated, by the labours of a monk; and the name of
James Baradæus has been preserved in the appel-
lation of Jacobites, a familiar sound which may
startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy
confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he re-
ceived the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle
of the east, and the ordination of fourscore thousand
bishops, priests, and deacons, is derived from the
same inexhaustible source. The speed of the zeal-
ous missionary was promoted by the fleetest drome-
daries of a devout chief of the Arabs; the doctrine
and discipline of the Jacobites were secretly esta-
blished in the dominions of Justinian; and each
Jacobite was compelled to violate the laws and to
hate the Roman legislator. The successors of Seve-
rus, while they lurked in convents or villages, while
they sheltered their proscribed heads in the caverns
of hermits, or the tents of the Saracens, still asserted,
as they now assert, their indefeasible right to the
title, the rank, and the prerogatives, of the patriarch
of Antioch under the milder yoke of the infidels,
they reside about a league from Merdin, in the
pleasant monastery of Zapharan, which they have
embellished with cells, aqueducts, and plantations.
The secondary, though honourable, place is filled
by the maphrian, who, in his station at Mosul itself,
defies the Nestorian catholic with whom he contests
the supremacy of the east. Under the patriarch and
the maphrian, one hundred and fifty archbishops
and bishops have been counted in the different ages

1 Epist. Archimandritarum et Monachorum Syriæ Secundæ ad Papam Hormisdam, Concil. tom. v. p. 598-602. The courage of St. Sabas, ut leo animosus, will justify the suspicion that the arms of these monks were not always spiritual or defensive. (Baronius, A. D. 513.

No. 7. &c.)

m Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 10-46.) and La Croze (Christianisme d'Ethiopie, p. 36–40,) will supply the history of Xenaias, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabug, or Hierapolis, in Syria. He was a perfect master of the Syriac language, and the author or editor of a

version of the New Testament.

The names and titles of fifty-four bishops who were exiled by Justin, are preserved in the Chronicle of Dionysius. (apud Asseman. tom. ii. p. 54.) Severus was personally summoned to Constantinoplefor his trial, says Liberatus (Brev. c. 19.)-that his tongue might be cut out, says Evagrius, (l. iv. c. 4.) The prudent patriarch did not stay to examine the difference. This ecclesiastical revolution is fixed by Pagi at the month of September of the year 518. (Critica, tom. ii. p. 506.)

The obscure history of James, or Jacobus Baradans, or Zanzalus, may be gathered from Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 144. 147.) Renau

III. In the style of the oriental III. THE MAchristians, the Monothelites of every RONITES. age are described under the appellation of Maronites, a name which has been insensibly trans

dot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 133.) and Assemannus, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 424. tom. ii. p. 62-69. 324-332. p. 414. tom. iii. p. 385388.) He seems to be unknown to the Greeks. The Jacobites themselves had rather deduce their name and pedigree from St. James the apostle.

P The account of his person and writings is perhaps the most curious article in the Bibliotheca of Assemannus, (toin. ii. p. 244-321, under the name of Gregorius Bar-Hebræus.) La Croze (Christianisme d'Ethiopie, p. 53-63.) ridicules the prejudice of the Spaniards against the Jewish blood which secretly defiles their church and state.

q This excessive abstinence is censured by La Croze, (p. 352.) and even by the Syrian Assemannus, (tom. i. p. 226. tom. ii. p. 304, 305.) The state of the Monophysites is excellently illustrated in a dissertation at the beginning of the second volume of Assermanuns, which contains 142 pages. The Syriac Chronicle of Gregory Bar. Hebræus, or Abulpharagius, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 321-463.) pursues the double series of the Nestorian catholics and the maphrians of the

Jacobites.

The synonymous use of the two words may be proved from Euty. chius; (Annal. tom. ii. p. 191. 207. 332) and many similar passages