ST. THOMAS. Gibbon says, According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was preached in India by St. Thomas. At the end of the ninth century, his sluine, perhaps in the neighbourhood of Madras, was devoutly visited by the ambas sadors of Alfred, and their return with a cargo of pearls and spices rewarded the zeal of the English monarch, who entertained the largest projects of trade and discovery. When the Portuguese first opened the navigation to India, the Christians of St. Thomas had been seated for centuries on the coast of Malabar, and the difference of their cha racter and colour attested the mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in arts, and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindustan ; the bus bandmen cultivated the palm tree, the merchants v.-ere enriched by the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the Nairs or nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected by the grati tude or the fear of the king of Cochin and the Zamorin hitnself. They acknowledged a Gentoo sovereign ; but they were governed even in tem poral concerns by the Bishop of Angamala. He still asserted his ancient title of metropolitan of India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen hundred churches, and he was entrusted with the care of two hundred thousand souls. Their religion would have rendered them the firmest and most cordial allies of the Portuguese ; but the inquisitors soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas the unpardonable guilt of heregy and schism. Instead of owning themselves the subjects of the Roman Pontiff; the spiritual and temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered, like their ancestors, to the communion of the Nestorian Patriarch ; and the bishops whom he ordained at Mosul traversed the\sea and land to reach their diocese on the coast of„Malabar. In their Syriac liturgy, the names of Theodore and Nestorius were piously commemorated ; they united their adoration of the two persons of Christ; the title of Mother of God was offensive to their ear, and they measured' with scrupulous avarice the honours of the Virgin Mary, whom the super stition of the Latins had almost exalted to the rank of a goddess. When her image was first
presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they indignantly exclaimed, " We are Christians, not idolators!" and their sitnple devotion WaS content with the veneration of the cross. Their separa tion from the western world had left them in ignorance of the improvements or corruptions of a thousand years ; and their conformity with the faith and practice of the fifth century would equally disappoint the prejudices of a papist or a protestant. It was the first care of the ministers of Rome to intercept all correspondence with the Nestorian Patriarch, and several of his bishm s expired in the prisons of the holy office. The flock, without a shepherd, was assault,ed by the power of the Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexis de 2ifenesez, Archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of the coast of Malabar. The synod of Diarnper, at which he presided, consummated the pious work of the reunion, and rigorously imposed the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Church, without forget ting auricular confession, the strongest engine of ecclesiastical torture. The memory of Theodore and Nestorius was condemned, and Malabar was reduced under the dominion of the Pope, of the Primate, and of the Jesuits who invaded the see of Angamala and Cranganore. Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy were patiently endured ; but as soon as the Portuguese empire was shaken by the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians asserted with vigour and effect the religion of their fathers. The Jesuits were in capable of defending the power which they had abused ; the arms of forty thousand Christians were pointed against their falling tyrants ; and the Indian archdeacon assumed the character of a bishop, till a fresh supply of episcopal gifts and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the Patriarch of Babylon.'—Gibbon, Ch. 47 ; La Croze Christianisme des Indes ; Geddes' Church History of Malabar.