Saviour's sufferings, miracles, and doctrines, and which were now translated into several different languages, reviewed them, rectified them, and joined himself to the former three evangelists," i.e., by writing his Gospel in Greek. (Jones on Canon, Vol. iii. 2.)

A MANUSCRIPT OF THE FOUR GOSPELS IN SYRIAC, BEARING DATE A.D. 78, is mentioned by J. S. Asseman, in his Bibliotheca. The manuscript was preserved at Bagdad on the river Tigris; at the end it had these words under written; "This sacred book was finished on Wed., the 18th day of the month Conun, in the year 389," that is of the Greeks, which was A.D. 78, "by the hand of the Apostle Achæus, a fellow labourer of Mar Maris, and a disciple of the Apostle Mar Thaddeus, whom we intreat to pray for us. This prayer implies that the statement was written after the time of Achæus (who is probably the person called also Aggæus), and Dr. Glocester Ridley says that Achæus died A.D. 48. For this and other reasons J. D. Michaelis says that the statement "is of no authority." (Marsh's Michaelis, 1823, vol. ii., p. 31.)

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THE GREAT NUMBER OF CONVERTS made by Thaddeus, needed to be supplied immediately with WRITTEN DIVINE RECORDS IN SYRIAC, to teach them what to believe and what to do. Greek books would not have been suitable, for their language was Syriac. The ancient Syriac copy of "The Teaching of Thaddeus," from which the above extracts are taken, states that not only King Abgar, and many of the people of that city, were converted, but many also throughout "all Mesopotamia, and the regions round about it." It says that Thaddeus "received all those who trusted in the Anointed, and immersed them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit of Holiness"; that the king gave money with which a house of worship was built; that in it they "offered praises all the days of their lives;" that in the worship conducted there, the teachers "read in the Old Covenant and in the New, and in the Prophets, and in the Acts of the Apostles every day." By the New Covenant seems to be meant the Gospels; for the N. C. is distinguished from the Acts of the Apostles, and a little afterwards it is said that many people assembled from day to day, and came to the prayers of the service, and the [reading of the] Old Covenant and of the New in four parts. (See Syriac, pages 13, 15.) The Syriac of this narrative is like that of the Peshito itself; a fact which corroborates the statement that the Peshito was made by the care of Thaddeus.

SOME DOUBT, however, attaches to some of the above statements, because "The Teaching of Thaddeus" has at the end, received forged additions. Dr. Glocester Ridley says that Achæus (sometimes called Aggæus) a disciple of Thaddeus died A.D. 48. Serapion was bishop of Antioch about A.D. 192-214; Zephyrinus was bishop of Rome 202-217. Yet in this record it is said that when Aggæus died, "Palut received the hand of priesthood from Serapion, bishop

of Antioch, which hand Serapion received from Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome, from the succession of the hand of priesthood of Simon Cephas.' So that though the above extracts do not seem to be corrupted, some of them may be so.

BARDESANES was a Syrian writer of note in cent. II. Cave says that he flourished about A.D. 172. Dr. Nathaniel Lardner, in his Credibility, 1735, vol. ii., p. 673, says, "Eusebius speaks favourably of him, though most later writers call him a heresiarch," Eusebius says that he was 66 a most eloquent writer in the Syriac language"; and that he wrote several dialogues in his own language against Marcion and other authors of different opinions." (See Eusebius' Hist., Cent., iv., ch. 30.) Also that he was at first a follower of Valentinus, and that though he gave up some of his errors, he did not get rid of all the filth of his former heresy. Epiphanius says that he was a native of Edessa and very intimate with the king then reigning there, who was also called Abgar, and a professed Christian; that Bardesanes "went into several great errors but continued to use the Law and the Prophets, both the Old and the New Covenant, joining with them some apocryphal books. (Lardner ii. 677-8.) This is evidence that at that time a Syriac "New Covenant" existed. Canon Westcott says also of the controversial writings of Bardesanes that they necessarily imply the existence of a Syriac Version of the Bible." (On the Canon, p. 237.)

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HEGESIPPUS lived in the latter part of the second century. Eusebius, bk. iv., ch. 22, says, "He sets forth some things from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and from the Syriac, and from the Hebrew dialect as his own, showing that he was one of the Hebrews who had trusted. Dr. Westcott (on Canon, p. 238) says, This testimony is valuable, as coming from the only early Greek writer likely to have been familiar with Syriac literature." The bare reference of Hegesippus to "the Syriac," leaves it uncertain to what part of the Scriptures in Syriac he referred; but it shows that he made use of some Syriac copy, and the Peshito is the only one which can be supposed to be intended.

APHRAATES, a Persian sage, wrote twenty-two Syriac homilies, A.D. 337-45. The citations from the gospels met with in these homilies, are said by Professor Wright to be very loose; to have some occasional resemblance to Cureton's Syriac, but to be on the whole, much nearer to the text of the Peshito. (Scrivener's Int. p. 323, note.)

EPHREM, of Edessa, was a very eminent Syrian writer. He died A.D. 373. J. S. Asseman devotes 140 folio pages to extracts from his writings, and to comments on them. They are in the same Syriac dialect in which the Peshito is written. Dr. Westcott (on Canon, p. 238) says, Ephrem treats the version in such a manner as to prove that it was already old in the fourth century."

One of Ephrem's similes will show the beauty of his style, and though it does not prove that he believed the N. C. Peshito to have divine authority, yet his constant use of it seems to imply that he was referring to it when he spoke of the New Covenant as a harp, the notes of which have been played by the finger of God. He said, "Praise be to the Lord of all, who framed and fitted for himself two harps, those of the Prophets and of the Apostles; but it is the same finger which has played upon the two, the different notes of the two covenants." (Asseman's Bib. Or., vol. i., p. 103.) IN THE FIFTH CENTURY, those who used the Peshito began to be divided into different sects. But, as Dr. Westcott observes, the Peshito has continued to be "universally received" and used by these different sects down to the present time. He says, "All the Syrian Christians, whether belonging to the Nestorian, Jacobite, or Roman communion, conspire to hold the Peshito authoritative, and to use it in their public services. . . . The Peshito became in the East the fixed and unalterable RULE OF SCRIPTURE. (On the Canon, p. 239.)

THE THREE CHIEF SECTS which, to this day, continue to use the N. C. Peshito-Syriac books, are the Nestorians, Jacobites, and Maronites. Their names are derived from Nestorius, Jacob Baradæus, and Maron.

NESTORIUS, or NESTORE, became Patriarch of Constantinople, A.D. 430. An absurd custom had arisen of calling Mary who was the mother of Jesus, "The Mother of God." Nestore objected to it, and said, as Mosheim relates, that she "was rather to be called the mother of Christ; since the Deity can neither be born nor die; and only the Son of Man could derive his birth from an earthly parent." (Cent. v.) The Emperor Theodosius called a council of bishops which met at Ephesus, A.D. 431. This council, one of "lawless violence," defended the false title given to Mary. Nestore was condemned. He resigned his bishopric, and was afterwards banished. Many agreed with him, and held that his sentiments had been taught by Scripture from the beginning. They were called Nestorians, not because they derived their sentiments from him, but because he was one of the chief defenders of those sentiments. Amrus, a Nestorian, about A.D. 1340, said, that "Nestore, whose name was imposed on them, was a Greek, but they were Syrians; they had never seen him, nor had he ever trod their lands" (Patriarchs, by Aloys Asseman, p. 206). Another council of bishops (for prelates had then assumed to themselves the right to rule the churches, and pretended that their decisions were laws given by the will of God,) met at Chalcedon in Asia Minor, not far from Constantinople, about A.D. 451. This Council, by its decrees, said that some had dared to corrupt the mystery of the gospel, and were denying the application of the word "Theotokos

mother of God, to the Virgin; " that this Council held that the Son, is "true God and true man..... ..begotten by the Father before the ages as to his Deity......but of Mary, virgin and deipara— Mother of God, as to his humanity; one and the same Jesus Christ, Son of God, Lord and only begotten, made manifest in two natures," which two natures "concur in one person," who is " one and the same only begotten Son, the God-Word" (Magdeburg Centuriators, cent. v., col. 531.) It is self-evident that things which differ so much as Godhead does from manhood, are not "one and the same." The first evident error in the above statement is that the Divine Word is a begotten Deity. The next is that the Deity of this begotten God, though declared to be quite distinct in nature from the humanity begotten of the Virgin, is nevertheless so 66 one" with it, that because Mary was mother of the manhood, she therefore was mother of the Godhead also. A greater absurdity is impossible. Yet this is still called, not only by Roman Catholics, but by a member of the Church of England, the orthodox faith of the true church. It was this absurdity which Nestore denied. For doing so, he is still called by many a heretic. Gibbon remarks, that the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon, namely, that in Christ there is but "one person in two natures,' was received by Europe during ten centuries of servitude to the Vatican, and was then "admitted without dispute into the creed of the Reformers." (Decline, ch. xlvii.) Is it difficult to form a correct opinion on this point? The statement that the Deity and manhood of Christ formed but "one person" seems to mean that they had only one capability of personal action. In Christ "dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; Col. ii. 9. Did this indwelling make the Godhead and the manhood to be so one, that when the manhood was crucified the Godhead was crucified ? God dwells, in an inferior degree, in his saints; does this make them to be so one in person with God that when they pray and sing, God prays and sings? And yet for denying that God was born of Mary Nestorians are counted heretics.

Nestorians were also charged with making the SONSHIP OF CHRIST DOUBLE. (See Magdeburg Centuriators, cent. v., col. 334, F.) Almost all the ancient creeds do this, by teaching that even the Deity of Christ was begotten, as well as his humanity. Nestore's opponents held this creed. But they seemed to have imagined that by calling the Godhead and the manhood "one person," they made the divine Sonship, in respect of which the Creed of Chalcedon says he was begotten before the ages," to be one and the same with the sonship of his humanity. The charge against the Nestorians was that by denying Christ to be "one person," they left the double sonship unresolved into oneness. Nestore and his opponents both held that the Divine Word was a begotten Deity; but his opponents added absurdity to error when

they imagined that the words "one person" converted two sonships into one. The word of God says nothing of a begotten God. “I am," which denotes underived existence, was used by Christ of his Godhead, as well as by God of himself when he spoke to Moses. (Ex. iii. 14; John viii. 58.) Oneness with the Father is the oneness of self-existence. God tells us that Christ is his Son because begotten by him of Mary, Luke i. 35.

ANOTHER CHARGE brought against Nestore was that he made FOUR PERSONS in the Godhead. (Mag. Centuriators, cent. v., col. 335 F., 338 F.) As if it were impossible to believe that the Deity of Christ differs from his manhood, without converting his manhood into a second Deity. Such absurdities seem to be intended to show that if men assume a lordship which God forbids, he makes their wisdom folly.

These facts are proof that the Nestorians, who suffered the loss of all things, and preferred to be under the ban of perpetual excommunication, rather than admit the untruth that Mary was the mother of God, gave far better proof of being trustworthy witnesses as to the origin of their Scriptures, than those of the Greek and Roman bodies who asserted that untruth.

THESE CHARGES HAVE BEEN MENTIONED because they help to account for the unwillingness, so strong in some quarters, to receive THE TESTIMONY OF THE NESTORIANS respecting their Peshito Scriptures. For, strange as it may seem, even Dr. Liddon, a Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, in his Bampton Lectures on the Divinity of Christ, 9th ed., 1882, defends the false title "mother of God," (p. 261.) He pleads that it has been used by those whom he calls "the whole church, since the Council of Ephesus," and justifies them in "attributing to God birth of a human mother," (p. 261, note.) He calls the rejection of that false title by Nestore, a "vital heresy," (p. 123.)

PENAL LAWs drove most of the Nestorians out of the Roman empire (Gibbon, chap. xlvii.) But ELSEWHERE THEY INCREASED EXCEEDINGLY. A large majority of the people of Persia became Nestorians. Cosmas, who is called the Indian navigator, and was a Nestorian, said of them, in the sixth century, that Christianity was successfully preached by them to the Bactrians, Huns, Persians, Indians, Medes, and Elamites; and that the number of churches from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian sea, was almost infinite. Gibbon says that, in a subsequent age their missionaries pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar; that some of them entered China, and that under the Mohammedan Caliphs, "their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were computed to surpass the Greek and Roman communions." (Gibbon, ch. xlvii. Nestorians.) All these churches used the Peshito.

THE BEST CHARACTERISTICS of the Nestorians are their LOVE AND USE OF THE PESHITO, and THE'R GREAT CARE TO KEEP IT

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