Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/404

 servants, who killed him privately, to prevent his recantation.

had again taken Gojam from Sela Christos; which last disgrace so affected him, that he desired to retire and live as a private man in that province.

king, having now no other enemy, all his attention was employed in preparing for a campaign against Melca Christos of Lasta. But, as he found his army full of disaffection, it was proposed to him, before he took the field, to content them so far as to indulge the Alexandrians in some rites of the old church; and a proclamation was accordingly made by the king, "That those who chose to observe "the Wednesday as a fast, instead of Saturday, might do it;" and some other such indulgences as these were granted, which were understood to affect the faith.

As soon as this came to the ears of the patriarch, he wrote a very sharp letter to the king, reproving him for the proclamation that he had made; adding, that it was an encroachment upon the office of the priesthood, that he, a layman, should take upon him to direct in matters merely ecclesiastical. He warned the king, moreover, that God would call him to the very strictest account for this presumption, and reminded him of the words of Azarias the chief priest to king Uzziah, and of the punishment of leprosy that followed the king's encroachment on the ecclesiastical function; and insisted upon Socinios contradicting his proclamation by another.