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570 None of these attempts at reconciliation, compromise, and suppression had succeeded in bringing back the Egyptian national Church into union with the Greek Church. It has ever since remained in separation. With the exception of some 6,000 Melchites, mostly Greeks, nearly all the Christians in Egypt at the present day are Monophysites. The national Church of Egypt, the Coptic Church, is of the same faith as the Jacobite Church in Syria.

Eeturning for a little to the internal condition of the Coptic Church during this period, we see that for sixty years after the banishment of John Talai there had been no Melchite patriarch in Egypt. Then Justinian forced a man named Paul into the vacant post ( 541). No Copt would recognise him. But a cruel injustice was done to the national Church in transferring its revenues to the Melchite patriarch, who enjoyed them in his sinecure office, while the patriarch who was actually working at the head of the Church in Egypt was left dependent on the freewill offerings of his people. It was the same with the clergy under him. The ecclesiastical endowments and official revenues were confiscated for the little handful of Melchites. The situation is parallel to that of the United Free Church in Scotland in our own day; and that without any parliament to secure a tolerable equity. Thus the Coptic Church was not only anathematised by the orthodox Church; it was disestablished and disendowed by the State. Yet it was not crushed; nor did the small favoured community gain anything but the sordid profit of revenue by the unfair transaction. With all its endowments it never flourished, never grew. It has remained to this day a phantom Church with offices, but without functions, and in all respects an alien in the land on which it was forced many centuries ago. After the Mohammedan invasion, this Melchite organisation lost its privileges and its dues.

Meanwhile the real Church of Egypt became more national. The liturgies were now translated into the Coptic language. Early in the reign of the Emperor Maurice