The Nestorians and their Rituals/Volume 2/Chapter 1
THE NESTORIANS
AND
Their Rituals, &c.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
REASONS WHY THE NESTORIANS SHOULD BE HEARD IN SELF-DEFENCE.
In a matter of such importance as that which it is now proposed to investigate, it is by far the safer and more satisfactory way for all parties, to allow the Nestorians to speak for themselves. As in the former ages of the Church's history, so now, there are many who look upon this sect as holding doctrines, not only erroneous, but destructive of the soul's salvation,—doctrines vitally affecting the atonement of our Blessed Saviour, that great corner-stone of the Christian's faith and hope, and without which Christianity is but a name. With so serious a charge laid at their door, it is no more than common justice that the accused should have a patient hearing, and be permitted to state fully and freely what their belief is. It is said, and said with some degree of truth, that Nestorius himself was not fairly treated in this respect; and although we may not doubt of the orthodoxy of the doctrine established by the Œcumenical council of Ephesus, yet it would have been better had Nestorius obeyed the summons, calling him to appear before the Council, and had the sentence against him been pronounced after he had been permitted to speak for and to defend himself.
More than fourteen centuries have elapsed since the sentence of the Church cut off from the privileges of her communion all those who followed the dangerous error, that in Jesus Christ our Blessed Saviour, there are two distinct persons, as well as two natures. Nestorius constantly denied that he held this doctrine; and his followers in modern times are no less steadfast in disclaiming it. That the question herein involved is trifling, or that it is irrelevant to the saving faith, none will pretend, except such as do not perceive its relation to the great doctrine of the atonement,[1] or who are presumptuous enough to condemn the united piety, learning, and godly zeal of the Church in the early ages of Christianity. The doctrine established by the Council of Ephesus concerning our Blessed Lord is this: that Christ was one divine person, in whom two natures were most closely and intimately united, but without being mixed or confounded together. And this is the faith which has always been received and confessed by the majority of Christians, by the Latins, Greeks, and English, that is, in a manner by all the churches of the whole world. This is the faith which God has blessed with increase, which has gone forth and converted many nations, and spread to the uttermost parts of the earth, and which is still subduing the heathen to the sceptre of the Crucified One. Now, although it is not right to measure truth by the number of its supporters, still if our Lord sent His Apostles to teach and to baptize the nations to the end of the world, and promised always to be with them, it cannot without too great an improbability be supposed, that He suffered almost all His Church to become heretical and to wander from the true faith by the Council of Ephesus, and then afterwards blessed them as they have been blessed from that time down to the present moment. The hand of the Almighty must be seen in all this; and to us it is a proof of the fulfilment of the divine declaration: "Those who honour Me, I will honour; and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed." God, in His providence, towards those who have kept the faith in the Person of His Son whole and undefiled, and those who either deny it or hold it wrongly, as do the Nestorians, has clearly manifested on which side His approbation rests. The former He has increased and exalted, the latter He has suffered to dwindle away, to be oppressed and enslaved by infidels, and to be reduced to a most pitiable state of poverty in all things appertaining to this world and the next, as they are at this day.
We may not, however, so fix our minds upon this one view of the providential dealings of the Almighty, as to overlook the important and most interesting fact of the continued preservation of the Nestorians. Thrown as they have been for centuries under the galling yoke of Islâm, and subjected ever and anon to the most cruel persecutions on account of their faith in Christ, rising during intervals of rest and bestirring themselves to fulfil the last injunction of the Saviour to His Apostles by preaching the Gospel to the heathen beyond them, then struggling for their very existence,—now in favour with the infidels who rule over them, then ground to the dust by tyranny and oppression,—the wonderful preservation of this sect for 1400 years, and their own preservation too of so much of the pure doctrine of the Gospel, comes to us in the shape of an assurance from the Sovereign Ruler of all things, that He has not utterly cast off nor rejected them, nor suffered them absolutely to fall away into any fatal heresy.
May it not be, then, as many learned men have concluded, that though in error with respect to the language in which they declare their belief in the Second Person of the Glorious Trinity, and blameworthy in the unseemly comparisons and the improper expressions by which they attempt to explain a mystery which infinitely surpasses the extent of man's imperfect reason, and justly to be condemned for their refusal to submit to the authority of the Church, the Nestorians, nevertheless, hold in effect, the true Catholic doctrine as it is revealed to us in Holy Scripture and as was set forth and established by the Council of Ephesus?
Now, however just we may believe the providence of the Almighty to have been towards this sect, for their wilful estrangement from the visible Body of Christ; yet, there can be no doubt, that the Church also has suffered by this unfortunate division, and that her empire over the heathen has been retarded thereby. Had the Nestorians continued united to the Church, how much glory might have redounded to the Redeemer's Name, through the labours of their early missionaries, whose zeal and piety are worthy of our close imitation! How many of the far-off eastern nations in Tartary, India, and China among whom they preached the Gospel, and among whom their efforts were sometime blessed, might this day have been numbered among the triumphs of the Cross? Placed in the van of Christianity, and where the baneful heresy of the False Prophet made its first conquests, the Nestorians, had they not been cut off from the Church Catholic, might through the Divine blessing, have driven back the impious Invader, and saved the Church from this devastating scourge.
If, then, the cutting off of this people from the Communion of the Church has been a grievous loss not only to the Nestorians themselves, but to Christianity at large, may it not piously be hoped that their restoration would prove an unspeakable blessing? This cannot be doubted; and it is my earnest prayer to Almighty God, that the Church of England may see it to be, not only her duty, but her privilege to undertake this charitable work. And it is in order that those to whom authority in such matters is committed may fairly and candidly judge wherein the Nestorians are wanting in the true faith, or erroneous in their manner of holding it, that the following exposition of their doctrines is given, that they may either be absolved from the charges laid against them, or that those charges may be fully proved, and the proper means of correcting and restoring them be adopted. To this end they ought to be allowed to speak for themselves, and in the following extracts from their recognized authorities, it will be seen that no attempt has been made to withhold anything which might fairly make either against or for them.
Hitherto we have had principally in view the feelings of those who are justly sensitive of any departure from the orthodox faith in the Person of Christ, and who would hesitate to hold communion with any sect upon the bare ground of the Church's decree pronounced against it. Such Christians are persuaded that there can be no real union unless there is a perfect agreement more especially in the confession of those sacred truths, which respect the humanity and Divinity of our Blessed Lord, and that the voice of the Church, as it has confirmed and established these, is an authority not to be doubted or called in question.
There is another class of Christians, however, who hold that such views of the Church's power in controversies of faith are extreme, and erroneous; and who deem the profession of some modern error, such as the doctrine of direct invocation of saints and angels, to be a far greater obstacle to Christian fellowship than any avowed disagreement with the decree of a General Council, on whatever subject that decree may have been passed. Such have evidently been the opinions of the generality of travellers and missionaries who have of late visited the Nestorians in their own country. They have been satisfied that they hold the Nicene Creed, and that they are to all outward appearances, without many of the superstitions and errors of the Church of Rome. The simplicity of their worship has contrasted strikingly with the burdensome and gaudy ceremonial of the Roman ritual, and they have (too hastily perhaps) come to the conclusion that all that the Nestorians require is spiritual life to perfect them in the full enjoyment of Christian truth and all its holy privileges. Few, if any, have looked beyond the surface of things, and have thus, perchance, deceived themselves, and helped to deceive others. They have contributed to confer or to impose upon the Nestorians the title of "Protestants of the East," and their bare denial of the Supremacy of the See of Rome has well nigh been made by them to stand in the place of the One, Catholic, and Orthodox faith. Far be it from the writer to charge this community with errors of which they are innocent, or in any way to damp the godly zeal of such as are interested in their welfare; but the truth must be told in all faithfulness, and the following extracts carefully translated from the recognized authorities of the Nestorians may perhaps tend to a fuller and more just appreciation of their tenets, and ultimately lead to the best mode of correcting in them what is erroneous, and of perfecting in them what is wanting. To this end the present work was undertaken, and to this end the blessing of the Great Head of the Church is invoked upon it.
- ↑ An Independent Missionary at Mosul was once asked by a learned though rather disputatious Jacobite deacon, whether, when our Blessed Lord hung upon the Cross, He was God as well as man, and whether His humanity alone, or His united Divinity and humanity suffered. The missionary replied, that he did not know. Ignorance on so important a subject, sometimes real, but often affected and specious, is, to say the least, unbecoming on the part of a professing teacher of religion, and very ill-timed when expressed towards any of the Eastern sects, who are suspected of heterodoxy on points connected with this important question. On hearing the reply of the Missionary, the deacon said to him: "Then you had better return to your country without attempting to teach us."