they should also understand our attitude: we stand for our own position, on either side, and there is no malice. Secondly, they are equally heretical and schismatical from the point of view of the Orthodox, and, with the qualifications to be noted hereafter, each of them looks upon the others as heretical and schismatical. There is, then, theologically, no common unity between these Churches, except as much as exists necessarily among all Christians. They are not, theologically, nearer to the Orthodox or to each other than they are to the Catholic Church. The entire conversion and reunion of one group would not affect the others. Yet there are some points in which all together do form one group. Before we come to these points let us be clear about who all these people are. It is not difficult to grasp. We have said that all are either Nestorian or Monophysite. That gives us at once a great division into two main groups. Theologically, these groups are diametrically opposed to each other; they are poles apart. Nestorianism divides Christ into two persons, Monophysism confuses him into one nature. Each feels, or ought to feel (for it is a question how far these old controversies are now realized by any of them), nearer to us and to the Orthodox than to the other main group: and each accuses us (and the Orthodox) of the rival heresy. The Nestorian (at any rate in the days when these were burning questions) thought us to be practically Monophysites; the Monophysite abhorred our theology as being infected with the poison of Nestorius. An alliance between them against us (there have been cases of something like it) is as curious a spectacle as the alliance of Claverhouse and the Cameronians in Scotland against William III.
Our first group, Nestorian, now contains two Churches. First we have the body called the Nestorian Church, a very small sect on either side of the Turkish-Persian frontier, having a long and glorious history. This comes naturally first in our account, as being the oldest existing schismatical Church. It once had very extensive missions. One remnant of these missions remains along the south-western (Malabar) coast of India. It might seem most natural to place the Church of Malabar immediately after the Nestorians, as belonging to them, But the Malabar people were separated for many centuries from their Mother
