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CHAPTER VI.
The former narrative left our readers at Deir Zaaferân, the seat of the Syrian Patriarch. I deem this the fittest place to lay before them a general view of the present state of religion among the Syrian or Jacobite Christians.
It is not to be doubted that the efforts made by Rome during the last and preceding centuries to bring over the Jacobites to her allegiance, and the powerful assistance which the French government has afforded in this work of proselytism, have tended in a high degree to reduce them to their present pitiable condition. Nor may we forget, whilst attempting to account for the great diminution in their number, and for the decay of truth and general intelligence among them, the oppression and tyranny which they have undergone for centuries from a despotic and infidel government. Yet fruitful as this combined antagonism has allowedly been, it does not adequately account for the present deplorable state into which they have fallen. For this we must assign a more efficient cause, proceeding indeed from the same omnipotent Disposer of all things, but working more silently on the minds of those, who, because they refuse His Fatherly correction, are at length made to suffer His judicial chastisements. The continued separation of the Jacobites from the Church of Christ, from which their forefathers were cut off by the council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451, for their denial of the Two Natures in the incarnate Saviour, whereby
