i. p. 74,) and the Arabic version is marked with
many recent interpolations. Yet this Code contains many curious relics
of ecclesiastical discipline; and since it is equally revered by all the
Eastern communions, it was probably finished before the schism of
the Nestorians and Jacobites, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. xi. p.
363--367.)]

[Footnote 114: Theodore the Reader (l. ii. c. 5, 49, ad calcem Hist.
Eccles.) has noticed this Persian school of Edessa. Its ancient
splendor, and the two aeras of its downfall, (A.D. 431 and 489) are
clearly discussed by Assemanni, (Biblioth. Orient. tom. ii. p. 402, iii.
p. 376, 378, iv. p. 70, 924.)]

[Footnote 115: A dissertation on the state of the Nestorians has swelled
in the bands of Assemanni to a folio volume of 950 pages, and his
learned researches are digested in the most lucid order. Besides this
ivth volume of the Bibliotheca Orientalis, the extracts in the three
preceding tomes (tom. i. p. 203, ii. p. 321-463, iii. 64--70, 378--395,
&c., 405--408, 580--589) may be usefully consulted.]

The desire of gaining souls for God and subjects for the church, has
excited in every age the diligence of the Christian priests. From the
conquest of Persia they carried their spiritual arms to the north, the
east, and the south; and the simplicity of the gospel was fashioned and
painted with the colors of the Syriac theology. In the sixth century,
according to the report of a Nestorian traveller, [116] Christianity
was successfully preached to the Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the
Indians, the Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites: the Barbaric
churches, from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea, were almost
infinite; and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number and
sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper coast of Malabar,
and the isles of the ocean, Socotora and Ceylon, were peopled with an
increasing multitude of Christians; and the bishops and clergy of
those sequestered regions derived their ordination from the Catholic of
Babylon. In a subsequent age the zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the
limits which had confined the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks
and Persians. The missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without
fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into
the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the Selinga. They
exposed a metaphysical creed to those illiterate shepherds: to those
sanguinary warrior