Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/347

Rh "It is now more than a year since your deputy, the well-beloved presbyter George Badger, came to us with a message of peace and offer of assistance from your holy Church. Before the above-named presbyter came to us we knew but little of the glory and greatness of your orthodox Church, our intercourse with the western Churches having been cut off for a great length of time, and all we knew of them was through the medium of the Church of Rome,—that church which through her emissaries has raised up a [sic] strange faith and wicked traditions and practices contrary to the apostolical doctrine, which corrupt traditions we abhor. And this Church has been endeavouring within the last century to pervert the right way as found in these regions, and has succeeded in causing to err those who live in the plains from the royal path, and in turning them away from obedience to their lawful shepherds. But since the arrival of your deputy the greatest misfortunes and persecutions have happened to us at the hands of our enemies, with which you are doubtless well acquainted. We have been driven from our homes by the infidels, our houses have been destroyed, our property plundered, our churches razed and desecrated, our old men massacred, and our women and children carried into captivity In all these afflictions which have befallen us, under the providence of the Most High, your deputy has been after our chief support and confidence. He has fed those among us who were hungry, and clothed our naked ones, he has collected those of us who were scattered abroad, visited the sick, helped the distressed, and has been all along as a father beloved of his children, and as an esteemed brother loved by all his brethren. We pray to reward him in our stead for the kindness and bounty which he has manifested towards us; for it is indeed a small matter for us to give him this document as a testimony of all the various good which he has done for us and to us, for night and day he has laboured for our welfare, comforted us in our affliction, and never tired. And not this only, but on our behalf he has opposed our enemies, and like a second Moses has stood in the gap for us, and it is through his exertions that we are not entirely destroyed, and have not been mingled with a strange people.

"Moreover through your deputy we have learned with certainty