have been greatly reduced. The Thomas Christians of East India are a branch of them, and so called from the Apostle Thomas, who is supposed to have preached on the coast of Malabar.

The Nestorians hold fast to the dyophysite Christology of their master, and protest against the Council of Ephesus, for teaching virtually the Eutychian heresy, and unjustly condemning Nestorius. They can not conceive of a human nature without a human personality, and infer two independent hypostases from the existence of two natures in Christ. They object to the orthodox view, that it confounds the divine and human, or that it teaches a contradiction, viz., two natures and one person. The only alternative to them seems either two natures and two persons, or one person and one nature. From their Christology it follows that Mary was only the mother of the man Jesus. They therefore repudiate the worship of Mary as the Mother of God; also the use of images (though they retain the sign of the cross), the doctrine of purgatory (though they have prayers for the dead), and transubstantiation (though they hold the real presence of Christ in the eucharist); and they differ from the Greek Church by greater simplicity of worship. They are subject to a peculiar hierarchical organization, with eight orders, from the catholicus or patriarch to the sub-deacon and reader. The five lower orders, including the priests, may marry; in former times even the bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs had this privilege. Their fasts are numerous and strict. Their feast-days begin with sunset, as among the Jews. The patriarch and the bishops eat no flesh. The patriarch is chosen always from the same family; he is ordained by three metropolitans. The ecclesiastical books of the Nestorians are written in the Syriac language.

II. The MONOPHYSITES, taken together, outnumber the Nestorians, and are scattered over the mountains, villages, and deserts of Armenia, Syria, Egypt, and Abyssinia. They are divided into four distinct sects: the JACOBITES in Syria; the COPTS in Egypt, with their ecclesiastical descendants in Abyssinia; the ARMENIANS, and the ancient MARONITES On Mount Lebanon (who were Monothelites, but have been mostly merged into the Roman Church).

1 The Abyssinian Church receives its Patriarch (Abuna, i. e. Our Father) from the Copts, but retains some peculiar customs, and presents a strange mixture of Christianity with superstition and barbarism. See my Church History, Vol. III. p. 778.

The Armenians (numbering about three millions and a half) excel all the rest in numbers, intelligence, and enterprise, and are most accessible to Protestant missionaries.

The Monophysites have their name from their distinctive doctrine, that Christ had but one nature (uovǹ púσis), which was condemned by the fourth ecumenical Council of Chalcedon. They are the antipodes of the Nestorians, whom they call Dyophysites. They agree with the Council of Ephesus (431) which condemned Nestorius, but reject the Council of Chalcedon (451). They differ, however, somewhat from the Eutychean heresy of an absorption of the human nature by the divine, as held by Eutyches (a monk of Constantinople, died after 451), and teach that Christ had one composite nature (μία φύσις σύνθετος Οι μία puoiç dirr). They make the humanity of Christ a mere accident of the immutable divine substance. Their main argument against the orthodox or Chalcedonian Christology is that the doctrine of two natures necessarily leads to that of two persons, and thereby severs the one Christ into two sons of God. They regarded the nature as something common to all individuals of a species (kowóv), yet as never existing simply as such, but only in individuals. Their liturgical shibboleth was, God has been crucified, which they introduced into the trisagion, and hence they were also called Theopaschites.

With the exception of the Chalcedonian Christology, the Monophysite sects hold most of the doctrines, institutions, and rites of the Orthodox Greek Church, but in simpler and less pronounced form. They reject, or at least do not recognize, the Filioque; they hold to the mass, or the eucharistic sacrifice, with a kind of transubstantiation; leavened bread in the Lord's Supper; baptismal regeneration by trine immersion; seven sacraments (yet not explicitly, since they either have no definite term for sacrament, or no settled conception of it); the patriarchal polity; monasticism; pilgrimages and fasting; the requisition of a single marriage for priests and deacons (bishops are not allowed to marry); the prohibition of the eating of blood or of things strangled. On the other hand, they know nothing of purgatory and indulgences, and have a simpler worship than the Greeks and Romans. According to their doctrine, all men after death go into Hades, a place alike without sorrow or joy; after the general judgment they enter into heaven, or are

cast into hell; and meanwhile the intercessions and pious works of the living have an influence on the final destiny of the departed.

NOTE ON RUSSIAN SCHISMATICS.-The dissenting sects of the Russo-Greek Church are very numerous, but not organized into separate communions like the older Oriental schismatics; the Russian government forbidding them freedom of public worship. They are private individuals or lay-communities, without churches and priests. They have no definite creeds, and differ from the national religion mostly on minor ceremonies. The most important among them are the RASKOLNIKI (i. e. Separatists, Apostates), or, as they call themselves, the STAROVERS (Old Believers). They date from the time of Nicon, Patriarch of Moscow, and protest against the ritualistic innovations introduced by this remarkable man in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and afterwards by the Czar Peter the Great; they denounce the former as the false prophet, and the latter as the antichrist. They reject the benediction with three fingers instead of two, the pronouncing of the name of Jesus with two syllables instead of three, processions from right to left instead of the opposite course, the use of modern Russ in the service-books, the new mode of chanting, the use of Western pictures, the modern practice of shaving (unknown to the patriarchs, the apostles, and holy fathers), the use of tobacco (though not of whisky), and, till quite recently, also the eating of the potato (as the supposed apple of the devil, the forbidden fruit of paradise). They are again divided into several parties.

For information about these and other Russian Non-conformists, see STRAHL: History of Heresies and Schisms in the Greek-Russian Church, and his Contributions to Russian Church History (I. 250 sqq.); HEPWORTH DIXON: Free Russia (1870), and the literature mentioned in Herzog's Encyklop., Art. Raskolniken, Vol. XII. p. 533.

FOURTH CHAPTER.

THE CREEDS OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.

General Literature.

L Collections of Roman Catholic Creeds:

J. TEG. LBR. DANZ: Libri Symbolici Ecclesiæ Romano-Catholica, Weimar, 1835.

Fr. W. STREITWOLF and R. E. KL.Ener: Libri Symbolici Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, conjuncti, atque notis, prolegomenis indicibusque instructi, Götting. 1838, 2 vols. Contains the Conc. Trid., the Prof. Fidei Trid., and the Catech. Rom.

HENE, DENZINGER (R. C., d. 1862): Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum, quæ de rebus fidei et morum a Conciliis Ecumenicis et Summis Pontificibus emanarunt, edit. quarta, Wirceburgi, 1865 (pp. 548). A convenient collection, including the definition of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary (1854), and the Papal Syllabus (1864).

II. Roman Catholic Expositions and Defenses of the Roman Catholic System:

BELLARMIN'S Disputationes, BOSSUET's Exposition, MÜHLER's Symbolik, PERBONE'S Prælectiones Theologica. See § 23.

III. Protestant Expositions of the Roman Catholic system (exclusive of polemical works):

PH. C. MARHEINEKE (Prof. in Berlin, d. 1846): Christliche Symbolik oder historisch-kritische und dogmatisch-comparative Darstellung des kathol., luther., reform. und socinian. Lehrbegriffs, Heidelb. 1810–13. The first 3 vols. (the only ones which appeared) are devoted to Catholicism.

W. H. D. ED. KÖLLNER (Prof. at Giessen): Symbolik der heil, apost. kathol. römischen Kirche, Hamb. 1844. (Part II. of his unfinished Symbolik aller christlichen Confessionen.)

A. H. BAIER (Prof. at Greifswald): Symbolik der römisch-katholischen Kirche, Leipz. 1854. (The first volume of an unfinished Symbolik der christlichen Religionen und Religionspartheien.)

$22. CATHOLICISM AND ROMANISM.

The Roman Catholic Church embraces over 180 millions of members, or more than one half of nominal Christendom.' It is spread all over the earth, but chiefly among the Latin races in Southern Europe and America. It reaches in unbroken succession to the days of St. Peter and Paul, who suffered martyrdom in Rome. It is more fully developed and consolidated in doctrine, worship, and polity than any other Church. Its hierarchy is an absolute spiritual monarchy culminating in the Bishop of Rome, who pretends to be nothing less than the infallible Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. It proudly identifies itself with the whole Church of Christ, and treats all other Christians as schismatics and heretics, who are outside of the pale of ordinary salvation.

But this unproved assumption is the fundamental error of the system. There is a vast difference between Catholicism and Romanism. The former embraces all Christians, whether Roman, Greek, or Protest

'It is estimated that there are about 370 millions of Christians in the world, which is not much more than one fourth of the human family (1,370,000,000). Of these 370 millions the Roman Church may claim about 190, the Greek Church 80, the Protestant Church 100 millions. But the estimates of the Roman Catholic population vary from 180 to 200 millions. * Geographically speaking, the Roman Church may be called the Church of the South, the Greek Church the Church of the East, the Protestant Church the Church of the West.

ant; the latter is in its very name local, sectarian, and exclusive. The holy Catholic Church is an article of faith; the Roman Church is not even named in the ancient creeds. Catholicism extends through all Christian centuries; Romanism proper dates from the Council of Trent. Mediæval Catholicism looked towards the Reformation; Romanism excludes and condemns the Reformation. So ancient Judaism, as represented by Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets, down to John the Baptist, prepared the way for Christianity, as its end and fulfillment ; while Judaism, after the crucifixion of the Messiah, and the destruction of Jerusalem, has become hostile to Christianity. 'Catholicism is the strength of Romanism; Romanism is the weakness of Catholicism.'

In Romanism, again, a distinction must be made between the Romanism of the Council of Trent, and the Romanism of the Council of the Vatican. The Old Catholics' of Holland and Germany adhere to the former, but reject the latter as a new departure. But the papal absolutism has triumphed, and there is no room any longer for a moderate and liberal Romanism within the reign of the Papacy.

The doctrinal standards of the Roman Catholic Church may accordingly be divided into three classes:

1. The ECUMENICAL Creeds, which the Roman Church holds in common with the Greek, excepting the Filioque clause, which the Greek rejects as an unauthorized, heretical, and mischievous innovation.'

2. The ROMAN or TRIDENTINE Creeds, in opposition to the evangelical doctrines of the Reformation. Here belong the Council of Trent, the Profession of Pius IV., and the Roman Catechism. They sanction a number of doctrines, which were prepared in part by patristic and scholastic theology, papal decrees, and mediæval councils, but had always been more or less controverted, viz., tradition as a joint rule of faith, the extent of the canon including the Apocrypha, the authority of the Vulgate, the doctrine of the primitive state and original sin,

The Encyc

The Greek Church is as much opposed to this Latin interpolation as ever. lical Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs and other prelates, in reply to the Epistle of Pius IX., dated Jan. 6, 1848, urges no less than fifteen arguments against the Filioque, and reminds Pope Pius of the testimony of his predecessors, Leo III. and John VIII., 'those glorious and last orthodox Popes.' Leo, when appealed to by the delegates of Charlemagne, in 809, caused the original Nicene Creed to be engraved on two tablets of silver, on the one in Greek, on the other in Latin, and these to be suspended in the Basilica of St. Peter, to bear perpetual witness against the insertion of the Filioque. This fact, contrasted with the reverse action of later Popes, is one among the many proofs against papal infallibility.