a storm on the coast of Italy. The princely income
of the later patriarchs, raised from the churches of all Egypt under the
name of the offerings of the pious, sometimes amounted to two thousand
pounds of gold, or four hundred thousand dollars. But while these
Melchite or royalist bishops were enjoying the ecclesiastical revenues,
and administering the civil affairs of the diocese and of the great
monasteries, there was a second bishop who held the Jacobite faith, and
who, having been elected by the people according to the ancient forms of
the Church, equally bore the title of patriarch, and administered in
his more humble path to the spiritual wants of his flock. The Jacobite
bishop was always a monk. At his ordination he was declared to be
elected by the popular voice, by the bishops, priests, deacons, monks,
and all the people of Lower Egypt; and prayers were offered up through
the intercession of the Mother of God, and of the glorious Apostle
Mark. The two churches no longer used the same prayer-book. The Melchite
church continued to use the old liturgy, which, as it had been read in
Alexandria from time immemorial, was called the liturgy of St. Mark,
altered however to declare that the Son was of the same substance with
the Father. But the Koptic church made use of the newer liturgies
by their own champions, Bishop Cyril, Basil of Caesarae, and Gregory
Nazianzen. These three liturgies were all in the Koptic language, and
more clearly denied the two natures of Christ. Of the two churches the
Koptic had less learning, more bigotry, and opinions more removed from
the teachings of the New Testament; but then the Koptic bishop alone
had any moral power to lead the minds of his flock towards piety and
religion. Had the emperors been at all times either humane or politic
enough to employ bishops of the same religion as the people, they would
perhaps have kept the good-will of their subjects; but as it was, the
Koptic church, smarting under its insults, and forgetting the greater
evils of a foreign conquest, would sometimes look with longing eyes to
the condition of their neighbours, their brethren in faith, the Arabic
subjects of Persia.

The Christianity of the Egyptians was mostly superstition; and as it
spread over the land it embraced the whole nation within its pale, not
so much by purifying the pagan opinions as by lowering itself to their
level, and fitting itself to their corporeal notions of the Creator.
This wa