Thomas, they indignantly exclaimed, "We are Christians, not idolaters!"
and their simple devotion was content with the veneration of the cross.
Their separation from the Western world had left them in ignorance
of the improvements, or corruptions, of a thousand years; and their
conformity with the faith and practice of the fifth century would
equally disappoint the prejudices of a Papist or a Protestant. It was
the first care of the ministers of Rome to intercept all correspondence
with the Nestorian patriarch, and several of his bishops expired in the
prisons of the holy office.

The flock, without a shepherd, was assaulted by the power of the
Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexis de Menezes,
archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of the coast of Malabar.
The synod of Diamper, at which he presided, consummated the pious work
of the reunion; and rigorously imposed the doctrine and discipline of
the Roman church, without forgetting auricular confession, the strongest
engine of ecclesiastical torture. The memory of Theodore and Nestorius
was condemned, and Malabar was reduced under the dominion of the pope,
of the primate, and of the Jesuits who invaded the see of Angamala
or Cranganor. Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy were patiently
endured; but as soon as the Portuguese empire was shaken by the courage
and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians asserted, with vigor and
effect, the religion of their fathers. The Jesuits were incapable of
defending the power which they had abused; the arms of forty thousand
Christians were pointed against their falling tyrants; and the Indian
archdeacon assumed the character of bishop till a fresh supply of
episcopal gifts and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the
patriarch of Babylon. Since the expulsion of the Portuguese, the
Nestorian creed is freely professed on the coast of Malabar. The trading
companies of Holland and England are the friends of toleration; but
if oppression be less mortifying than contempt, the Christians of St.
Thomas have reason to complain of the cold and silent indifference of
their brethren of Europe. [124]

[Footnote 122: The Indian missionary, St. Thomas, an apostle, a
Manichaean, or an Armenian merchant, (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes,
tom. i. p. 57--70,) was famous, however, as early as the time of Jerom,
(ad Marcellam, epist. 148.) Marco-Polo was informed on the spot that he
suffered martyrdom in the city of