Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/190

 168 THE DECLINE AND FALL superstition had first invented in the climate of Ethiopia. ^"^ A new baptism^ a new ordination, was inflicted on the natives ; and they trembled with horror when the most holy of the dead were torn from their graves, when the most illustrious of the living were excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the defence of their religion and liberty, the Abyssinians rose in arms, with desperate but unsuccessful zeal. Five rebellions were extinguished in the blood of the insurgents ; two abunas were slain in battle, ' whole legions were slaughtered in the field, or suffocated in their caverns : and neither merit nor rank nor sex could save from an ignominious death the enemies of Rome. But the victorious monarch was finally subdued by the constancy of the nation, of his mother, of his son, and of his most faithful friends. Segued listened to the voice of pity, of reason, per- haps of fear ; and his edict of liberty of conscience instantly revealed the tyranny and weakness of the Jesuits. On the death of his father, Basilides expelled the Latin patriarch, and restored to the wishes of the nation the faith and the Final ex- discipline of Egypt. The Monophysite churches resounded the Jesuits, with a song of triumph, " that the sheep of ^^^thiopia were ' now delivered from the hysenas of the West " ; and the gates of that solitary realm were for ever shut against the arts, the science, and the fanaticism of Europe.^^ 1^ I am aware how tender is the question of circumcision. Yet I will affirm, I. That the .<^thiopians have a physical reason for the circumcision of males, and even of females (Recherches Philosophiques sur les Am^ricains, torn. ii.). 2. That it was practised in Ethiopia long before the introduction of Judaism or Christianity (Herodot. 1. ii. c. 104. Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 72, 73). " Infantes circum- cidunt ob consuetudinem non ob Judaismum," says Gregory the Abyssinian priest (apud Fabric. Lux Christiana, p. 720). Yet, in the heat of dispute, the Portuguese were sometimes branded with the name of z/«cz>fwwf«yf(f (La Croze, p. 80; Ludolph. Hist, and Comment. 1. iii. c. i). 164 The three Protestant historians, Ludolphus (Hist, ^thiopica, Francofurt, 1681 ; Commentarius, i6qi ; Relatio Nova, &c. 1693, in folio), Geddes (Church History of Ethiopia, London, 1696, in Bvo), and La Croze (Hist, du Christianisme d'Ethiopie et d'Armenie, La Haye, 1739, in i2mo), have drawn their principal materials from the Jesuits, especially from the General History of Tellez, published in Portuguese at Coimbra, 1660. We might be surprised at their frankness ; but their most flagitious vice, the spirit of persecution, was in their eyes the most meritorious virtue. Ludolphus possessed some, though a slight, advantage from the ^thiopic language, and the personal conversation of Gregory, a free-spirited Abyssinian priest, whom he invited from Rome to the court of Saxe-Gotha. See the Theologia ^thiopica of Gregory, in Fabricius, Lux Evangelii, p. 716-734.