Twenty-five metropolitans or archbishops composed
their hierarchy; but several of these were dispensed, by the distance
and danger of the way, from the duty of personal attendance, on the
easy condition that every six years they should testify their faith and
obedience to the catholic or patriarch of Babylon, a vague appellation
which has been successively applied to the royal seats of Seleucia,
Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. These remote branches are long since withered;
and the old patriarchal trunk is now divided by the _Elijahs_ of
Mosul, the representatives almost on lineal descent of the genuine and
primitive succession; the _Josephs_ of Amida, who are reconciled to the
church of Rome: and the _Simeons_ of Van or Ormia, whose revolt, at the
head of forty thousand families, was promoted in the sixteenth century
by the Sophis of Persia. The number of three hundred thousand is allowed
for the whole body of the Nestorians, who, under the name of Chaldeans
or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful
nation of Eastern antiquity.

According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was preached in India
by St. Thomas. At the end of the ninth century, his shrine, perhaps in
the neighborhood of Madras, was devoutly visited by the ambassadors of
Alfred; and their return with a cargo of pearls and spices rewarded the
zeal of the English monarch, who entertained the largest projects of
trade and discovery. When the Portuguese first opened the navigation
of India, the Christians of St. Thomas had been seated for ages on
the coast of Malabar, and the difference of their character and color
attested the mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in arts, and possibly
in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan; the husbandmen
cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were enriched by the pepper
trade, the soldiers preceded the _nairs_ or nobles of Malabar, and their
hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude or the fear of the
king of Cochin and the Zamorin himself. They acknowledged a Gentoo of
sovereign, but they were governed, even in temporal concerns, by the
bishop of Angamala. He still asserted his ancient title of metropolitan
of India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen hundred
churches, and he was intrusted with the care of two hundred thousand
souls. Their religion would have rendered them the firmest and most
cordial allies of the Portuguese; but the inquisitors soon discerned