doctrine of Scripture and the belief of his own Church, that if it was also the belief of the Western Church, there was on this point no difference between us, but he still thought it would be safer to use the language of the Evangelist, 'proceeding from the Father, and sent by the Son.'1 "We cannot," he added, "improve upon the Gospel." I quoted the passages which bear upon the procession from the Son,2 and stated what had appeared to me, upon careful examination, to be the opinions of Anglican Divines.3 I said, moreover, that the doctrine of the twofold procession was plainly a doctrine of the Western Church, but that I was not aware that the particular mode of interpretation was prescribed by the Church, or that any could be taken as authoritative. Upon the historical argument I admitted my own private conviction to be that the words, and the Son, were not in the Creed as framed by the Council of Nice, A. D. 325, and the First Council of Constantinople, A. D. 381; and that the form approved by the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431, was the same as is now held by the Greek and other Eastern Churches. This I said was my private opinion upon a simple historical question which had not been judged by my own Church. . . . . . . A servant now came in with the dinner, and I engaged with the Patriarch to pursue the subject at another time.

July 10. To-day the Patriarch was engaged all the morning in the rural occupation of superintending the threshing and winnowing of the wheat. In the afternoon I called upon him, and commenced the conversation by asking the whole number of Patriarchs in the line which he represented. He sent for the Annals, and turning to the list of

1 The Patriarch alluded to the passage in John xv. 26; "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the FATHER," &c.

2 E.

g. John xv. 26; Gal. iv. 6; 1 Pet. i. 11.

3 See, for example, Burnet on the Articles, Art. V.

the Patriarchs, counted 141, including St. Peter at the beginning, and himself at the end. I asked to what age the book reached back. The Patriarch replied, "To Adam," It struck me that if it had been kept in the way of annals from that time, it must be indeed an interesting book. I requested him, therefore, to turn to the first page. He began to read an account of the Creation, but soon stopped, saying, "All this was taken from the Bible." He then turned into the middle of the book, and read two or three pages relative to the times preceding the Council of Nice. The passage contained several curious facts, which I did not remember having seen in any history of the period. It confirmed the story of the awful death of Arius, and narrated a deception practised by him upon the Emperor. Arius having written a statement of his belief, put the paper in his bosom, and when called upon to testify his assent to a form drawn up by the Emperor, laid his hand apparently on his heart, but really upon the paper there concealed, and said, "This is my belief."

We then turned to other matters. After conversing for a time, and seeing that he was evidently wearied from his labors abroad, I left him to his repose, but the old man rose with me and went to the field to look after his harvest.

Time would fail me to record even a small portion of the conversations which I had in the monastery with the Patriarch, Bishops, and monks, although, if I could relate them, they might furnish additional illustrations of the comparative purity of the Syrian Church, and the unusual strictness of discipline which it still preserves. Upon the great point of difference-the Fourth General Council-as well as upon matters of a practical character, they were long and animated, but free from any bitterness and asperity. Another and not less frequent topic was the gross misrepresentations respecting the Anglican Church, which had reached even this quiet retreat. Who would think of going

to the old monastery of Zafran to hear such stories as that in England priests are not ordained, but are created by the sovereign, or that the Sacrament of Holy Communion is given to the people only once in thirty years, or that when it is given, the priest says a few words, and all the people rush to the table, and each snatches a portion for himself? These, and many others such like, have been diligently circulated, not only in Mesopotamia, but all over the East. I have met them every where, and in every instance where I have been able to trace them, have found them to have come from Papal emissaries. I was not, therefore, surprised to hear of them in the Patriarchal monastery of Zafran. The object in circulating them has manifestly been to keep the Eastern Christians aloof from the influences of a pure faith and worship, while the great end of Romish labors has been to introduce the peculiar errors of the Church of Rome, and to degrade Christianity by superstitions before unheard of. In the Mesopotamian Churches the utmost jealousy has been shown of the simple and highly spiritual character of the ancient worship, and the effort has chiefly been to hang upon it idle ceremonies and superstitious observances, for the purpose of counteracting its native tendencies. Its supposed resemblance to Anglicanism, which is in truth no more nor less than its resemblance to primitive Christianity, has been watched with the most sensitive suspicion, and wherever converts have been made to Popery, the first object has been to corrupt their religion by introducing such things as holy water, and rosaries, and bowing to images, and wearing pictures, and every expedient that could be devised, to turn men's minds from the doctrines, at once pure and primitive, of a living faith and a self-denying obedience. When we thus see minds left in all their former ignorance, and thence plunged to a deeper depth in what that ignorance will inevitably make a dangerous and soul-destroying superstition, there can be no doubt of the aim and tendency of

such efforts. Whatever may be the faith of the Church of Rome, or however different may be the face in which she appears in other lands, among the Christians of the East these have been her labors. Hence it is that we can have no affinity with her; hence she is our enemy, and hence too our labors must be to assume the ground of genuine Catholicism-seeking to preserve the things that remain and are ready to die, to infuse the life and vigor of youth into forms which breathe the spirit and power of ancient days, to stand upon the undoubted doctrines of the primitive faith, and to effect their re-establishment wherever they have been weakened or lost, to instruct in what is both pure and Apostolic, to restore a right appreciation of the Holy Sacraments and the self-crucifying duties of a holy life. If the Church of England, or our own, has been misunderstood, it is because she has not been rightly known, because she is mingled, in the conceptions of Eastern Christians, with the peculiarities of those with whom she has no connexion; now represented as rejecting the divinity of our Saviour, now as having discarded infant baptism, and now as destitute of a duly organized ministry. And so it must remain until she herself will make herself known as a Church essentially sound and primitive, as possessing all the credentials and marks of the Church of Christ, in her faith, her sacraments, her ministry, and her worship; as discarding errors which she does not hold, and as seeking a return to unity upon ancient and scriptural grounds. Until she does this, the first step in her high and holy mission will not have been taken.

I was a week at the monastery before I found a leisure hour for visiting the library. I had heard much of its value, and expected to find it a rich repository of Syriac literature. What was my surprise to find that it consisted of no more than fifty volumes piled together on a shelf in a low, dark room, and covered thick with dust. Most of them were

works in Arabic, written in the Syriac character and the

greater part were injured by time, neglect, and rats. There were a few books of European origin, the most valuable of which was a Biblia Polyglotta, (published in London in 1756, and containing the Hebrew, Septuagint, Arabic, Syriac, and Vulgate versions, with Latin translations of the first four, and the Targum, with a Latin translation,) and Edmund Castell's Lexicon Heptaglotton, published in 1786. There were also a few copies of the British and Foreign Bible Society's edition of the Scriptures in Arabic and Syriac, and these, with the others, were all the remains of the celebrated library of Der Zafran. The Bishop who accompanied me, told me that the rest were destroyed by the Kurds during their occupation of the monastery. They used them, he said, for wadding to their guns, and for culinary and other purposes.

July 11. The Fast of the Apostles closed yesterday, and to-day is the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. The morning services were in the chapel of St. Peter, which had not till now been open for public worship, since my arrival. The altar in this Church is differently placed from any other that I have seen. It is against the wall, on the east side, beneath no alcove or canopy, and concealed only by a low curtain in front, hanging from a horizontal wire passing from one side to the other, which curtain is open during most of the service. Above the altar is a stone set into the wall, and upon this stone is a simple cross engraved, with an inscription in Strangheli. The stone is said to have been brought from the Church in Antioch in which St. Peter himself ministered. The words of the inscription are

1 The date is after our computation of time, but with the Syrians it was the 29th of June, their reckoning being that generally used among the Eastern Christians, which falls at present 12 days behind ours. The Feast of St. Peter is also on the 29th June in the English and American Churches, and indeed in most others, including the Greek, the Latin, and the Armenian.