iests, and deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible
source. The speed of the zealous missionary was promoted by the fleetest
dromedaries of a devout chief of the Arabs; the doctrine and discipline
of the Jacobites were secretly established in the dominions of
Justinian; and each Jacobite was compelled to violate the laws and to
hate the Roman legislator. The successors of Severus, while they lurked
in convents or villages, while they sheltered their proscribed heads in
the caverns of hermits, or the tents of the Saracens, still asserted,
as they now assert, their indefeasible right to the title, the rank, and
the prerogatives of patriarch of Antioch: under the milder yoke of
the infidels, they reside about a league from Merdin, in the pleasant
monastery of Zapharan, which they have embellished with cells,
aqueducts, and plantations. The secondary, though honorable, place is
filled by the _maphrian_, who, in his station at Mosul itself, defies
the Nestorian _catholic_ with whom he contests the primacy of the East.
Under the patriarch and the maphrian, one hundred and fifty archbishops
and bishops have been counted in the different ages of the Jacobite
church; but the order of the hierarchy is relaxed or dissolved, and the
greater part of their dioceses is confined to the neighborhood of the
Euphrates and the Tigris. The cities of Aleppo and Amida, which are
often visited by the patriarch, contain some wealthy merchants and
industrious mechanics, but the multitude derive their scanty sustenance
from their daily labor: and poverty, as well as superstition, may impose
their excessive fasts: five annual lents, during which both the clergy
and laity abstain not only from flesh or eggs, but even from the taste
of wine, of oil, and of fish. Their present numbers are esteemed from
fifty to fourscore thousand souls, the remnant of a populous church,
which was gradually decreased under the impression of twelve centuries.
Yet in that long period, some strangers of merit have been converted
to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was the father of Abulpharagius,
primate of the East, so truly eminent both in his life and death. In his
life he was an elegant writer of the Syriac and Arabic tongues, a poet,
physician, and historian, a subtile philosopher, and a moderate divine.
In his death, his funeral was attended by his rival the Nestorian
patriarch, with a train of Greeks and Armenians, who forgot their
disputes, and mingled their