88 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. the book of the Gospels on the seat at the right hand of the altar, and consecrate the first bishop according to this rite, and by the grace of God. As for the rest, they may then be consecrated by three bishops. I pray the Holy Spirit to pour out his blessing upon you, as he formerly did on the Apostles." Thomas, Bishop of Marajah, who has preserved for us this valuable correspondence in his " History of the Monastery of Beth-hobeh," wrote towards the end of the eighth century, and states that he had himself seen the letter of Patriarch Timotheus to Bishop Jeballah ; adding also, that the patriarch wrote to him to inform him that David, one of the newly consecrated bishops, had been chosen Metropolitan of China.* We have no very circumstantial information con- cerning the state of the Christian Missions in high Asia, but we must presume that they were very flou- rishing, and that the number of neophytes was con- siderable. We see, in fact, that from the beginning of the sixth century the hierarchy was perfectly esta- blished, and the metropolitans succeeded one another regularly. So advanced an organisation leaves room to suppose that Christianity had already made great progress. We read in a canon of the Synod, held in 850, by the Patriarch Theodosius, and which recalls the prescriptions of those of Nicea and Ezechiel in 570, that all metropolitan bishops were commanded to re- pair to the patriarch once in four years ; but that the metropolitans of India and China, were dispensed from this necessity on account of the great distance. Here
- Sinentibus Metropolitan! datum fuisse Davideni en Epistola
Timotliei dedici. Thomas Mai-g. " Hist. Monas." lib. iv. ch. xx. S
