returns to the state of the old Persian Church before it fell into heresy and schism. But the Orthodox have no Uniates. In joining them a Nestorian must leave his nation, accept the Byzantine rite, and become practically a Russian. This is merely the invariable difference between the uniformity always demanded by the Orthodox and the more generous toleration of the Catholic Church.
The first Protestant missionaries did not at once set up special sects. They were on very friendly terms with the Nestorian hierarchy, and rejoiced rather that they had discovered these "Protestants of the East." So we hear of their going to church with Nestorian bishops.[1] And the Nestorians, as we said (p. 116), at first encouraged them and welcomed them, no doubt thinking them the "Nestorians of the West." At any rate, here were men who abjured the Theotókos and the Pope, who cared nothing for Ephesus (or, for the matter of that, for any other council). These first Protestants did not work directly against the Nestorian hierarchy. Yet indirectly it came eventually to the same thing. They worked on the basis of the usual Protestant contempt for any rites or Church organization. They simply ignored all that, saying nothing directly against it, but teaching pure Gospel, faith alone, and so on, together with a good deal of general education and Western ideas. They propagated, besides Bibles,[2] such books as the Pilgrim's Progress[3] and the Saints' Everlasting Rest.[4] No doubt they foresaw that their pupils in time would discover for themselves the vanity of such things as bishops, rites and sacraments, would quietly drop away from their ancient liturgy and attend only the missionaries' prayer-meetings. At any rate, that is what happened. Now the Presbyterians have evolved an East Syrian Presbyterian sect. They have their own chapels and services, and do, as a matter of fact, make a fairly large number of converts from the Nestorian Church.[5]
- ↑ E.g. Malech: op. cit. p. 325.
- ↑ Dr. Perkins and Abraham Malech did the New Testament into modern colloquial Syriac.
- ↑ In modern Syriac, Urmi, 1848.
- ↑ Ib. 1854.
- ↑ This is just what happened in the cases of Protestant missions to the Orthodox. They too did not at first attack the official Church; but did eventually form rival religious bodies (Orth. Eastern Church, p. 256). Of
