Malabar, or Meliapour, a league only
from Madras, (D'Anville, Eclaircissemens sur l'Inde, p. 125,) where the
Portuguese founded an episcopal church under the name of St. Thome, and
where the saint performed an annual miracle, till he was silenced by the
profane neighborhood of the English, (La Croze, tom. ii. p. 7-16.)]

[Footnote 123: Neither the author of the Saxon Chronicle (A.D. 833) not
William of Malmesbury (de Gestis Regum Angliae, l. ii. c. 4, p. 44) were
capable, in the twelfth century, of inventing this extraordinary fact;
they are incapable of explaining the motives and measures of Alfred;
and their hasty notice serves only to provoke our curiosity. William of
Malmesbury feels the difficulty of the enterprise, quod quivis in hoc
saeculo miretur; and I almost suspect that the English ambassadors
collected their cargo and legend in Egypt. The royal author has not
enriched his Orosius (see Barrington's Miscellanies) with an Indian, as
well as a Scandinavian, voyage.]

[Footnote 124: Concerning the Christians of St. Thomas, see Assemann.
Bibliot Orient. tom. iv. p. 391--407, 435--451; Geddes's Church History
of Malabar; and, above all, La Croze, Histoire du Christianisme des
Indes, in 2 vols. 12mo., La Haye, 1758, a learned and agreeable work.
They have drawn from the same source, the Portuguese and Italian
narratives; and the prejudices of the Jesuits are sufficiently corrected
by those of the Protestants. Note: The St. Thome Christians had excited
great interest in the ancient mind of the admirable Bishop Heber. See
his curious and, to his friends, highly characteristic letter to
Mar Athanasius, Appendix to Journal. The arguments of his friend and
coadjutor, Mr. Robinson, (Last Days of Bishop Heber,) have not
convinced me that the Christianity of India is older than the Nestorian
dispersion.--M]

II. The history of the Monophysites is less copious and interesting than
that of the Nestorians. Under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, their
artful leaders surprised the ear of the prince, usurped the thrones of
the East, and crushed on its native soil the school of the Syrians. The
rule of the Monophysite faith was defined with exquisite discretion
by Severus, patriarch of Antioch: he condemned, in the style of the
Henoticon, the adverse heresies of Nestorius; and Eutyches maintained
against the latter the reality of the body of Christ, and constrained
the Greeks to allow that he was a liar who spoke truth. [125]