simplicity and zeal in the service of their Redeemer, as their Lord and their God. The creed which these representatives of an ancient line of Christians cherished, was not in conformity with papal decrees, and has with difficulty been squared with the thirty-nine articles of the Anglican episcopacy. Separated from the western world for a thousand years, they were naturally ignorant of many novelties introduced by the councils and decrees of the Lateran; and their conformity with the faith and practice of the first ages, laid them open to the unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism, as estimated by the Church of Rome. "We are christians, and not idolaters," was their expressive reply when required to do homage to the image of the Virgin Mary. They had piously commemorated men reputed as Nestorians in their liturgy, and adhered to the communion of the patriarch of Antioch or Mosul, who used to ordain their metropolitans or bishops. These shepherds were wont to traverse the distant regions, from Syria, and pass by sea to the coast of Malabar, where they were affectionately received. They were charged with addressing their adoration to two persons in Christ under one aspect : but Mosheim explains this word for aspect, barsopa as synonimous with the Greek word prosopon-so that this idea of aspect agrees with our signification of person. The same diligent historian mentions, to their lasting honour, that they were the most careful of all other societies, and successful in avoiding a multitude of superstitious opinions and practices which They infected the Greek and Latin Churches. read the daily lessons in the vernacular tongue, and had no restrictions upon the use of the same language for public prayer. The Jesuits accuse the Syrian clergy of India of practising marriage, and observing only the two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper: of maintaining only two orders, or names of office in the church, the bishop and deacon, and of refusing to invoke saints, to worship images, or believe in purgatory: they also regarded the title of Mother of God to Mary, as most offensive. The Portuguese dominion of the eastern seas, enabled the Romish emissaries to cut off intercourse between the patriarch and the Syrian Christians: their bishops died, or were carried prisoners to Lisbon. Gibbon represents the metropolitan, or bishop of Angamala, as exercising a jurisdiction over fourteen hundred churches, and a pastoral care of two hundred thousand souls. La Croze states them at fifteen hundred churches, and as many towns and villages. They refused to recognise the pope, and declared they had never heard of him; they asserted the purity and primitive truth of their faith since they came, and their bishops had for thirteen hundred years been sent from the place where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. In arms, in arts, as well as in virtue, they excelled the other natives, and enjoyed distinctions accorded only to heirs of the crown, or ambassadors besides themselves; their husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree; their merchants were enriched by the pepper-trade; they were instructed in the use of arms from their eighth to their twenty-fifth year, and their soldiers took precedence of the Nairs or nobles of Malabar, who regarded it as a great honour to be esteemed as their brothers; and their privileges, as second in rank only to the Brahmins, were held in respect by the highest Hindoo princes, who manifested for them an extraordinary veneration. The people were resolute in defending their ancient faith, and refusing submission to the pope. By stratagem, fraud, and conspiracy, therefore, the Portuguese persecutors attempted, and, for a season, seemed to accomplish their submission. A Synod was convened in the year 1599, at Udiamper, and 150 of the Syrian clergy compelled to appear, where they were required to abjure such of their opinions as did not accord with the Romish creed. Archbishop Menezes presided: the only alternative held out was, suspension and the inquisition; all their original works on ecclesiastical subjects were ordered to be consumed. The supremacy of the pope was thus set up: but the people declared they would rather part with their lives than use the Latin language in their prayers; their Syriac liturgy, purged in conformity with papal usurpations, was retained, and a nominal conformity was thus established; and some of their flocks and chapels alienated on the sea coast, among which St. Thome was included. At such a time it was well for their church -. 1 Rome. she had a wilderness to which she might flee. The churches in the interior would not yield to They proclaimed perpetual hostility to the Inquisition; they hid their books, and fled to the mountains, and sought protection from even heathen princes. They partially recovered their religious liberty, when the courage and industry of the Dutch shook the Portuguese empire. The Syrians asserted, with vigour and effect, the religion of their fathers. The Jesuit persecutors were unable to defend the power which they had usurped and abused: Gibbon says, "the arms of forty thousand Christians were pointed against their falling tyrants: and the Indian archdeacon assumed the character of bishop, till a fresh supply of episcopal gifts and Syrian missionaries could be obtained from the patriarch of Babylon." Yet the leaven was too intimately diffused to be so easily expelled, and there is now a Syrian Roman church, where the nominal Nestorians maintained their worship for thirteen centuries. The Syrian christians of both sections, however, exhibit the ruins of antiquity, venerable for their continuance, and interesting for their history. They were driven from their beloved abodes, but their present sequestered residence is not without its charms. The enthusiast among them for nature's beauties (and why should not there be among the Syrian Christians, lovers of nature ?) will scarcely mourn the event which led to a seclusion in their present abode. They are placed in the vicinity of stupendous mountains; the face of their country presents a varied scene of hill and dale, and winding stream. The extreme limits of the Syrian churches from south to north, are more than 150 miles apart, and from east to west, or in breadth, 30 miles. Besides many mountain streams, the ebbing or receding backwaters wind through the valleys. The perennial streams from the hills preserve the valleys in the richest verdure; forests, gardens, and plantations abound, and the produce of the soil is most exuberant. The mountain lands are not barren or uncovered, but present a richness of scenery of unequalled grandeur; here the Indian oak, otherwise called the teak, flourishes in immense forests of the finest timber; while the lower woodlands produce pepper and frankincense, cardamoms, cassia, and other aromatics. Fruits of a hundred diversified names and qualities are here poured from the lap of nature; the pine and plantain, the papayah and pombilmo, the citron and melon, the chaina and mango, the cocoa-nut and cucumber. The appearance of the villages and their rural and simpler places of worship in this mountainous and wooded country, is most picturesque. Remote from the busy haunts of commerce, or the populous seats of manufacturing industry, they may be regarded as the eastern Piedmontese, the Vallois of Hindostan, the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth through revolving centuries, though indeed their bodies lay as dead in the streets of the city which they had once peopled. |