PREFACE
This essay is an attempt at the filling of what appeared to the writer to be a distinct void in English ecclesiastical histories; and to give some account of a branch of the Church unknown to all except a very few students, during the most critical and important period of its history.
No one can be more conscious than the writer how much his work has suffered and been handicapped from the circumstances of its composition. The book was necessarily written away from any libraries except what was contained in the author's study; at a place where the procuring of any pamphlet required might take any time from six to twelve weeks; and where on one occasion the consultation of an authority implied waiting till a chance offered of making a laborious and dangerous journey of fourteen days' duration.
If it gains anything in vividness, and in grasp of the difficulties of those of whom it treats, from the fact that it was written among their modern descendants, whose circumstances have changed but little during the course of ages—this may be one compensation among many disadvantages.
The writer has throughout used for the Church in question the name "Assyrian." There is no historical authority for this name; but the various appellations given to the body by various writers ("Easterns," Persians, Syrians, Chaldæans, Nestorians) are all, for various reasons, misleading to the English reader.
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