doubtless the most perfect that has been contrived by the art of man.
Yet the body of the people, both in Syria and Egypt, still persevered
in the use of their national idioms; with this difference, however, that
the Coptic was confined to the rude and illiterate peasants of the Nile,
while the Syriac, [110] from the mountains of Assyria to the Red Sea,
was adapted to the higher topics of poetry and argument. Armenia and
Abyssinia were infected by the speech or learning of the Greeks; and
their Barbaric tongues, which have been revived in the studies of modern
Europe, were unintelligible to the inhabitants of the Roman empire. The
Syriac and the Coptic, the Armenian and the Aethiopic, are consecrated
in the service of their respective churches: and their theology is
enriched by domestic versions [111] both of the Scriptures and of the
most popular fathers. After a period of thirteen hundred and sixty
years, the spark of controversy, first kindled by a sermon of Nestorius,
still burns in the bosom of the East, and the hostile communions still
maintain the faith and discipline of their founders. In the most
abject state of ignorance, poverty, and servitude, the Nestorians and
Monophysites reject the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and cherish the
toleration of their Turkish masters, which allows them to anathematize,
on the one hand, St. Cyril and the synod of Ephesus: on the other, Pope
Leo and the council of Chalcedon. The weight which they cast into the
downfall of the Eastern empire demands our notice, and the reader may
be amused with the various prospect of, I. The Nestorians; II. The
Jacobites; [112] III. The Maronites; IV. The Armenians; V. The Copts;
and, VI. The Abyssinians. To the three former, the Syriac is common; but
of the latter, each is discriminated by the use of a national idiom.

Yet the modern natives of Armenia and Abyssinia would be incapable of
conversing with their ancestors; and the Christians of Egypt and Syria,
who reject the religion, have adopted the language of the Arabians. The
lapse of time has seconded the sacerdotal arts; and in the East, as well
as in the West, the Deity is addressed in an obsolete tongue, unknown to
the majority of the congregation.

[Footnote 108: In the Lateran synod of 679, Wilfred, an Anglo-Saxon
bishop, subscribed pro omni Aquilonari parte Britanniae et Hiberniae,
quae ab Anglorum et Britonum, necnon Scotorum et Pictorum gentibus
colebantur, (Eddius, in Vit. St. Wil