John Wesley Etheridge

“ While Simeon administered the discipline of the church, the time arrived when the wrath foredoomed against Jerusalem was to descend upon it. To this awful consummation there had been several intelligible preludes. The growing aversion to the Jewish people, which had become universal in the Roman provinces, had manifested itself in various forms of cruelty, as in the outrages inflicted on them in Egypt, Parthia, and Babylonia ”

“ This early time of Christianity was thus like the sunrise of a morning without clouds; and the minds of men, brought under a benign influence so new to our earth, partook at once of a serene cheerfulness, a God-like love, and a holy joy, which symbolized with the spirit of the first Paradise, and antedated the blessedness of that which is to come.
But oar life-time here, under any circumstances, is a probation. The faith of these first believers was speedily pat to the test ”

“ The latter, as a specific communion, was consolidated in Syria and Mesopotamia; but the theological dogma of the one nature has been held in common with them by multitudes in the patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Ech-miazin.
The Jacobites have always protested against being considered followers of Eutyches. But while they profess to anathematize that heresiarch, they merely reject some minor opinions of his, and hold fast his great distinguishing error of the absorption of the humanity of our Saviour in his divine nature. ”

“ Moreover, the divine nature was not changed or transmuted into the human, or commixed or confused therewith; neither was the human nature converted into the divine, nor commixed or confused with it; but an adunation of the two natures took place, of a mode equivalent to that which, by the union of body and soul, makes a human being: for as the soul and body are united in one human nature, so, from the union of the Godhead and manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, there has arisen a nature peculiar to itself ”

“ Divine Providence opened their way in a manner familiar to all readers of history; and, under the conduct of Simeon, this believing remnant found a refuge at Pella, a city in the mountainous part of the Decapolis, on the confines of Syria. ”

“ It is true that Chesadim, or Chesdim, is the Old-Testament name for the nation of the Chaldeans; but the circumstance thus pointed out, it must be confessed, furnishes but a dubious evidence in settlement of this question. The Nestorians have a legend, that the Magi went from Ooroomiah, or Urmiah, a city of Media, instructed by a prophecy of Zoroaster, who, at the time of the captivity, had been a disciple of the prophet Jeremiah. Zoroaster, or Zerdushta, was the great reformer of the old fire-worship, which prevailed so extensively in those countries. ”

“ Christianity in the metropolis of Palestine must not be classed among the churches which we proceed to enumerate, yet the Hebrew-Christian society that subsisted in Jerusalem in the apostolic and subsequent age may claim an interest in our retrospections, not indeed as belonging, strictly speaking, to those which have held the Peschito as their standard scripture-text, but in consequence of its affinity to them in language, and some peculiar customs, and as having been, in the phrase of the sacred writer, "the mother of them all." ”

“ So also Bar Hebræus, adopting an explication, probably from the Nestorians, says, "As the humanity of the Lord, not by [its own] nature, but on account of its union with the divine nature, is called God; so this bread and wine, not being flesh and blood by nature, but (metul Taibutho da-rucho da-alaihun) on account of the grace of the Spirit which is upon them, are called the body and blood of Christ." And again: "We call the bread and the wine, because of the Spirit's grace, the body and blood of God, (lau ba-kyono,) not by nature, but from their union with God." ”

“ The night is far spent, and a day of unparalleled brightness is yet in reserve for "the city which shall be built to the Lord," (Jer. xxxi. 35—40,) when the religion of the Son of God, unfolding within her its highest perfection in time, will render her the joy of the earth, and write upon her walls salvation, and upon her gates praise.
Note 1.—After the extension of the Macedonian empire by Alexander, Greek having become an almost current language, it was used vernacularly not only by Jews residing in Egypt, Asia Minor, &c, but by a large number of families in Jerusalem itself. ”

“ The foregoing are the principal authentic facts which have come down to us in relation to the Hebrew-Christian church. Christianity since that day has always had a name in Jerusalem; but that name has not only been unassociated with the reality, but dishonoured by almost all things the reverse. The holy city is still trodden down by the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. ”

“ The emperor Basilicus compelled no less than five hundred bishops to condemn the creed of Chalcedon; while the Henoticon, or Irenical Decree, of Zeno, though in words condemnatory both of Nestorius and Eutyches, maintained a silence on the authority of that council, which was considered as equivalent to at least a toleration of its opponents. At one period during the reign of Zeno, the three great patriarchates were held by men of avowedly heretical sentiments; Moggos, or Mongos, at Alexandria, Acacius at Constantinople, and Peter the Fuller at Antioch. ”

“ Matthew, communicated the first, though indistinct, evangelic tidings to the Gentiles of the East. It is impossible to dispel the obscurity which rests upon the questions of the country, station, and subsequent career of those devout and highly-favoured men, or to settle the titles of contending peoples who have laid claim to them as their countrymen. According to an Armenian tradition, the Magi came to the Holy Land from a part of Tartary called Tanguth, where, after their return, they prepared the way for the gospel. ”

“ In a former publication, [1] along with a translation of some parts of the Syriac New Testament, I submitted an account of the several versions of holy scripture extant in that language. This consisted of successive notices of the Old Testament in Aramean, that, namely, in the possession of the Syrians, and the various Targums of the Hebrew synagogue; the versions of the New Testament, the Philoxenian, Jerusalem, and Karkaphensian; and, more largely, the Peschito, or "old Syriac;"—in illustration of its great antiquity; its relation to the original Greek, and to certain oriental versions ”

“ With respect to the doctrine of the Trinity, he confounded person with nature, and taught a species of tritheism. His partisans, however, had several variations or shades of opinion. There were, (1.) The Damianitæ, who held that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, were distinct persons; each not God in himself, but God by participation in a common divine nature. (2.) The Petritæ, sectators of Peter of Antioch, who professed to believe that each person in the blessed Trinity is in himself God, by independent nature, substance, and individuality ”

“ They pray, as the other Syrians, for the dead, but deny the doctrine of purgatory.
The Jacobites of Syria and Mesopotamia have a traditionary belief, that they are lineally descended from the first Hebrew Christians. Dr. Wolff, speaking on this point, says: "They call themselves the Bnee Israel, 'the children of Israel,' whose ancestors were converted by the apostle James. There cannot be the least doubt, that their claim to being the descendants of the Jewish Christians of old is just. ”

“ He who has received the plain teachings of the inspired volume regarding the person of our Lord, will learn a salutary lesson on the infirmity of the human mind, and its proneness to err in things spiritual, from the fact, that an idea at once so contrary to the letter of scripture, and the general economy of redemption, should have had an advocate, in other points of character, so respectable. ”

“ In the ordination of a bishop, the person elected reads a confession of faith in the presence of the patriarch and of two or three bishops, who perform the entire ceremony, no priest or deacon assisting. ”

“ With regard to baptism, they believe that the Holy Spirit descends into the water, and regenerates the subject of the ordinance. The face of the child, or person, is turned toward the East, and a triple affusion of water is made by the left hand of the priest. ”

“ He blessed Abgarus and his entire household and the whole city. [6] He healed their sicknesses by the word of our Lord, and declared the miracles and signs he had wrought in the world, confirming his words by miracles ... He discipled Edessa and Mesopotamia, and taught them the ordinances of the gospel. With the assistance of Agæus, his disciple, he converted and baptized all the region of the East, as far as the Eastern Sea. When he was grown old and venerable, he improved his talent more than double ”

“ The regions of Sind and India, and adjacent parts of the East, as far as the Indian ocean, became Christian by the preaching of the apostle Thomas, one of the twelve. With him joined afterwards Jude, the son of James, also of the twelve. ”

“ He was a worshipper of the one true God, or, as Sir William Jones says, "a pure theist, who strongly disclaimed any adoration of the fire or other elements, and denied the favourite doctrine of two coeval independent principles, supremely good and supremely bad." The long sojourn of the Jews in the state of their captivity; their steadfastness, in general, in the true worship ”

“ And these persons having only laid the foundation of faith in remote and barbarous places, and constituted other pastors, committed to them the culture of those they had perfectly introduced to the faith, and departed again to other regions." [4] ]
Of the company of the apostles themselves, St. Thomas was, without controversy, the great messenger of the gospel to the East. From Syria to the Indies, and away to the confines of China, there are traces of his evangelic progress ”

“ And the Lord added to the church daily (τους σωζομενους) the saved." "And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; and believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women ”