Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/161

Rh But Mr. Badger quotes Nestorian writers who say plainly that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son. With regard to what they hold about the Church, it is difficult to understand exactly their position. They certainly believe that they alone hold the true faith as to our Lord's nature and person—that all who did agree with them have fallen away on this point. They say so plainly; they divide Christendom into three sects, the Monophysites, Melkites (including Franks), and the "Easterns" (themselves), who alone "never changed their faith, but kept it as they received it from the Apostles." Both the other sects are refuted from the Bible. So it would follow that all others are heretics, that the whole and only true Church of 'Christ is the tiny handful which obeys Mâr Shim‘un. Yet I doubt whether really they would have so magnificent a courage of their convictions. Probably, especially now under Anglican influence, they have evolved some cloudy kind of Branch theory—themselves being the purest branch. One wonders whether the American Presbyterians and the Danish Lutherans (with the ambiguous Nestorian archdeacon and Lutheran missionary Nestorius George Malech) are branches. And it would be very interesting to know what Mâr Shim‘un really thinks of the orthodoxy, orders and ecclesiastical position of his Anglican advisers.

Needless to say, Nestorians entirely reject the universal primacy and infallibility of the Pope, though they acknowledge him as first of the Patriarchs. If they were consistent they could not give him even this honour, since he is steeped in Ephesian and monohypostatic error, being himself a mighty leader of Ephesian heretics.

Nestorian theology, then, in general, is only half developed and cloudy, as is that of all smaller Eastern Churches. The worst