Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

flesh." To assert the contrary, and maintain that she was the Mother of God, is to convert "the Godhead into flesh," and involves one or the other of these heretical conclusionseither that the Virgin Mary was a divine being, or that Jesus Christ was not divine. For, since He could not, in the natural order of things, derive from His Mother a nature which she did not possess, if she were the parent of his Divinity as well as Humanity, she herself must have been divine previous to her conception of Him. On the other hand, if she were not divine, and He possessed no nature but what He derived from her, He cannot be God.

But I shall not discuss this question more fully; my object being merely to remark, that the Abbé Dubois, when-in a Letter to an English Clergyman, and he a Dignitary* of our Church-objecting against the Syrian Christians that they denied to the Virgin the title of "Mother of God," ought to have recollected, that, instead of rejecting this as an heretical tenet, or denouncing the Syrians for holding it, we hail it as a point of orthodoxy on which we are agreed.

"Behold the Nestorians in Travancore!" The Archdeacon of Bombay.

he exclaims. "Interrogate them; ask them for an account of their success in the work of Proselytism in these modern times? Ask them, Whether they are gaining ground? and, Whether the interests of their ancient Mode of Worship are improving? They will reply, that so far from this being the case, their Congregations, once so flourishing, and amounting (according to Gibbon's account) to 200,000 souls, are now reduced to less than an eighth of this number, and are daily diminishing." (pp. 25, 26.)

They would reply no such thing!

When the first Missionaries from Syria arrived in India, (whether in the Fifth Century, or at what precise period cannot be very accurately ascertained,) they succeeded in establishing the Christian Religion to a wide extent, converting Hindoos of the highest castes, Nairs, and even Brahmins, to their Faith*. La Croze informs us, that, in his day, the Diocese of the Syrian Bishop contained more than One Thousand Five Hundred Churches, and as many Towns and Villages. It has already been shewn what privileges they then enjoyed, and how

This is forcibly adduced by Lord Teignmouth, in argument to prove the practicability of converting the Hindoos to Christianity. Considerations, p. 24.

high a character they maintained among the Heathen also, how greatly they have fallen, and to what causes their decline is to be attributed. In the state of ignorance and dejection in which Drs. Kerr and Buchanan found them, it required all the efforts and perseverance of the Bishop and Catanars to protect their flocks against the subtlety and violence of the Jesuits and Carmelites. Not content with despoiling them of every vestige of civil or ecclesiastical liberty, Menezes, and others, robbed them of their most valuable books, and committed all they found to the flames. Thus did they deprive their helpless victims of the possibility of cultivating their minds: and is it not too much for a Jesuit now to exult over their fallen state!

Having shewn, that when the Abbé Dubois wrote this, the temporal circumstances of the Syrians were improving, I now pro-ceed to prove the same of their Ecclesiastical affairs. The fostering hand of a British Officer, another Cornelius, (Lieut.-Col. Munro,) was endeavouring to raise them from that state of depression to which the Roman-Catholics had reduced them. Amidst all their errors, they had for centuries defended their Altars and their Creed against Papal aggression; and that, too, with a spirit that

commands the admiration, and under sufferings that move the sympathies, of every free people. And, before the Abbé Dubois had so committed himself, in the year 1823, as to publish this erroneous statement, he ought to have acknowledged, that a liberal, a charitable, a Christian Nation, had, for years, taken a lively interest in their affairs, and already done much to raise them from the dust.

But he speaks from "such information as he possesses:" he has been assured" of such and such things. It seems, then, that he also, notwithstanding his invectives against "a Reverend Gentleman" for doing (as he asserts) the same thing, can fill his pages with "inaccuracies, exaggerations, and misrepresentations" (p. 202.), and, upon such questionable authority, impugn the statements of a man like the late Dr. Buchanan.

But to proceed

Lieut.-Colonel Munro, finding, within the sphere of his influence, such an interesting race of people as the Syrian Christians, like a judicious and a Christian Statesman, saw the policy, acknowledged the duty, and valued the privilege, of endeavouring to ameliorate their condition. This could not be effected without much toil and perseverance:

pro

but no impediments were suffered to defeat the plans, or check the operations, of this Philanthropist. "I have afforded," he says, in the Address already quoted, "since my first arrival in Travancore, the most decided protection to all classes of the Christians, and in particular to the Syrians. I experienced, however, some difficulty, for a time, in improving the condition of the Syrian Christians, in consequence of internal dissentions among themselves." These he ceeds to describe; but they need not be here repeated. He then adds, The death of the Bishop, and, the elevation of the Ramban to his office, removed some of the impediments that had opposed the measures which appeared to be requisite for the general amelioration of the Syrian Community." "But the assistance of intermediate agents was essentially necessary to the success of those measures; for the Syrians themselves were lamentably deficient, in knowledge, energy, and ability."

1

66

Colonel Munro applied to the Madras Corresponding Committee of the Church Missionary Society, to send as many Missionaries as could be spared, to assist in the execution of his designs. Accordingly, in 1816, the Rev. T. Norton was sent to Tra

« AnteriorContinuar »