Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/620

496 the New Testament they place the constitutions of the Apostles, which they call Synnodos, which, as far as the cases or doctrines apply, we may say is the written law of the country. These were translated out of the Arabic. They have next a general liturgy, or book of common prayer, besides several others peculiar to certain festivals, under whose names they go. The next is a very large voluminous book, called Haimanout Abou, chiefly a collection from the works of different Greek fathers, treating of, or explaining several heresies, or disputed points of faith, in the ancient Greek Church. Translations of the works of St Athanasius, St Bazil, St John Chrysostome, and St Cyril, are likewise current among them. The two last I never saw; and only fragments of St Athanasius; but they are certainly extant.

next is the Synaxar, or the Flos Sanctorum, in which the miracles and lives, or lies of their saints, are at large recorded, in four monstrous volumes in folio, stuffed full of fables of the most incredible kind. They have a saint that wrestled with the devil in shape of a serpent nine miles long, threw him from a mountain, and killed him. Another saint who converted the devil, who turned monk, and lived in great holiness for forty years after his conversion, doing penance for having tempted our Saviour upon the mountain: what became of him after they do not say. Again, another saint, that never ate nor drank from his mother's womb, went to Jerusalem, and said mass every day at the holy sepulchre, and came home at night in the shape of a stork. The last I shall mention was a saint, who, being very sick, and his stomach in disorder, took a longing for partridges; he called upon a brace of them to come to him,

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