in their hearts, they went still further, and were very loth to believe, if they did believe it at all, that the body of the Virgin Mary and St Anne were perfectly human.
Not to trouble the reader further with these uninteresting particulars and distinctions, I shall only add, that the Jesuits, in the account they give of the heresies, ignorance, and obstinacy of the Abyssinian clergy, have not misrepresented them, in the imputations made against them, either in point of faith or of morals. Whether, this being the case, the million they undertook of themselves into that country, gave them authority to destroy the many with a view to convert the few, is a question to be resolved hereafter; I believe it did not; and that the tares and the wheat should have been suffered to grow together till a hand of more authority, guided by unerring judgment, pulled them, with that portion of safety he had pre-ordained for both.
The Protestant writers again unfairly triumph over their adversaries the Catholics, by asking, Why all that noise about the two natures in Christ? It is plain, say they, from passages in the Haimanout Abou, and their other tracts upon orthodox belief, that they acknowledge that Christ was perfect God and perfect man, of a rational soul and human flesh subsisting, and that all the confessions of unity, coequality, and inferiority, are there expressed in the clearest manner as received in the Greek church. What necessity was there for more; and what need of disputing upon these points already so fully settled?
This, I beg leave to say, is unfair; for though it is true that, at the time of collecting the Haimanout Abou, and atthe
