alists or Baptists.[1] Perhaps the root of the ambiguous position of the Anglican missionaries is their (typically Anglican) neglect of any idea of jurisdiction. Apart from the question of Mâr Shim‘un's faith, they should consider a plain question: Has he, or has he not, any lawful jurisdiction from God? As head of a schismatical sect, outside the Church of Christ (on their own theory), of course he has not. Then he has no lawful authority, no one is bound in conscience to obey him, and it is wrong in any way to assist his usurped pretensions. The Orthodox, of course, would say this plainly. As for the heresy of the "Assyrians," we have already discussed that (pp. 81–84). A Church which officially repudiates the decrees of Ephesus, which glories in its fidelity to the theology of Nestorius and counts him among its saints, is heretical, although, no doubt, many simple souls in it do not understand much about that old controversy. Strangest of all, perhaps, is the hostility of these Anglican missionaries towards the Uniate Chaldees.[2] That they do not like our making converts from Anglicanism or Orthodoxy is natural enough. But they should rejoice in the Chaldees as much as in Roman Catholic converts from Lutheranism or Calvinism. The Chaldee abjures Nestorius, accepts Ephesus, and (on Anglican principles) leaves a heretical sect to enter the Catholic Church, in its largest branch. Is not this a good thing for him? When we consider further that the Chaldees have the original Patriarchal line, that Mâr Shim‘un represents merely an (originally Romanist) schismatical line (p. 102), the Anglican talk about Chaldees as schismatics becomes quite unintelligible. Except, of course, on the basis (so often assumed by Protestants of all kinds) that you had better be anything, even a Nestorian heretic, than be in union with the Pope of Rome.[3]
- ↑ Their answer to this is very typical. They say: "But Protestant Dissenters have no bishops." It is the curious Anglican idea that to have a bishop makes a sect all right, or nearly all right. The Arians had bishops. Would they think it lawful to co-operate with an Arian sect?
- ↑ They are nearly as cross with the Orthodox converts. They talk about the "Russian schism" in Persia, and rejoice to find "signs of repentance" among those who turned Orthodox. They contrast with the "schism" the "old Church," meaning the Nestorians (Kurds and Christians, p. 153). Do they really think that sect older than the Orthodox Church?
- ↑ This curious attitude seems characteristic of High Anglicans. Mr. Parry was sent on a mission to the Jacobites in 1892 (p. 335). He knows
