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480 knew it. To this day he is anathematised as a Nestorian by the Jacobites in their profession of faith.

Meanwhile the Nestorian movement was spreading farther north and east. Rabbulas had expelled a scholar Barsumas, who was connected with the theological school at Edessa, and who then went to Nisibis in Persian territory, where he became bishop ( 435). There he established a theological school which was essentially Nestorian in character. The original Syrian school at the capital was never purged of Nestorianism. Thus there were now two seats of learning from which the obnoxious tenets were disseminated, till the Edessa school was finally suppressed by the emperor in the year 489 on account of its heresy. Like the Huguenots after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, who brought the silk trade to England, like the Pilgrim Fathers who carried the best of Puritan energy out of England to found a new world, the Nestorians came to Mesopotamia with the arts and crafts of life. Carpenters, smiths, weavers, the best of the artisan class, they came to start industries and lay the foundations of manufacturing prosperity in the land of their adoption. Then the expulsion of Nestorians from the great school at Edessa—"the Athens of Syria," as Gibbon calls it—led to the propagation of their teaching in the remote regions of their travels. They did not go merely as exiles. As in the story of the Jerusalem Christians driven from their homes by the persecution of Herod, their very troubles converted them into missionaries. At home they were denounced as heretics; abroad, where no rumours of miserable doctrinal disputes were heard, they simply journeyed as enthusiastic missionaries of the gospel. And they were wonderfully successful, winning converts in one district after another as they penetrated further and yet further into the unknown lands of Asia.

In the first place this influx of Nestorians gave a great impulse to Christianity in Persia. Two influences combined to make that successful. The mere increase in numbers, the infusion of fresh blood, and the zeal and devotion of