missionaries now have vestments, daily celebrations, and so on. This makes their attitude towards the Nestorians all the more difficult to understand. They are not in communion with them;[1] but short of that they go every possible length. They make no converts. Their little paper[2] is never tired of insisting on this. They are very angry with the Roman missionaries who do make converts; they talk of the Uniates as schismatics from their lawful Patriarch. The Anglicans print books for use in Nestorian churches, they educate future Nestorian clergy, and teach their pupils the duty of obeying Mâr Shim‘un. They are always at hand to counsel, encourage and support the Patriarch. Naturally this attitude is pleasant to the Nestorians; the Anglicans are on the best possible terms with Mâr Shim‘un and his clergy. Only—how is it possible thus to co-operate with a heretical sect? If they thought the Nestorians one more branch of the Catholic Church, a branch long neglected, so now backward and in need of reform, their attitude would be most natural and right. But how can they think this? The Nestorians formally reject the fourth general council and honour Nestorius among the saints. If that does not make a body heretical, what does? Surely even a moderate Anglican accepts at least the first four general councils. How can these extreme High Churchmen so cavalierly ignore the fourth? Would they thus co-operate with Calvinists or Methodists? And is it not, from their own point of view, the duty of each Nestorian to leave his heretical sect and join one of the true branches of the Church, even by becoming a Uniate?
The Anglican answer to this is curious and typical. They say first that they have the blessing and approval of the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch,[3] to whose obedience these Nestorians should return; secondly, that they labour for that return. They do not print any heretical matter in the books they supply,[4] nor do they
- ↑ This point is quite clear. See Riley's Report, p. 12, n. 1.
- ↑ Assyrian Mission Quarterly Paper (London, Church House and S.P.C.K.), since 1890. The Rev. F. N. Heazell and Mrs. Margoliouth have edited a selection of extracts from this: Kurds and Christians (London, 1913). See here, p. 22: "We are not, as they feared, only another and better sort of proselytizers."
- ↑ See the correspondence in A. Riley: op. cit. pp. 25–28.
- ↑ This is a curious point. Apparently the Nestorians who know this fill in the omitted passages by hand. But the names of Nestorius, Bar Ṣaumâ,
