§ 145. THE MONOPHfSirE SECTS. 773
York, 1862, Lect. i. p. 92 ff. Respecting the present condition of tin Jacobites, Copts, Armenians, and Maronites, consult also works ol Eastern travel, and the numerous accounts in missionary magazine* and other religious periodicals.
The Monopliysites, like tlieir antagonists, the J^estoriaus, have maintained themselves in the East as separate sects "under their own bishops and patriarchs, even to the present day ; thus proving the tenacity of those Christological errors, which acknowledge the full Godhead and manhood of Ciirist, while those errors of the ancient church, which deny the Godhead^ oFThe^manTiood (Ebionism, Gnosticism, Manichseisin, Arianism, etc.)^^;^ sects, liave long since vanished. These Christolagical schismatics stand, as if enchanted, upon the same positTon~wETch they assumed in the fifth century. The Nestorians rejecnEe~1t7m-d ecumenical council, the Monophysites the fourth; the former hold the distinction of two natures in Christ even to abstract separation, the latter the fusion of the two natures in one with a stubbornness which has defied centuries, and forbids their return to the bosom of tlie orthodox Greek ch urch. They are properly the ancient national churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia, in distinction from the orthodox Greek church, and the united or Koman church of the East.
The Monophysites are scattered upon the mountains and in the valleys and deserts of Syria, Armenia, Assyria, Egypt, and Abyssinia, and, like the orthodox Greeks of those countries, live mostly under Mohammedan, partly under Russian, rule. They supported the Arabs and Turks in weakening and at last conquering the Byzantine empire, and thus furthered the ultimate victory of Islam. In return, they were variously favored by the conquerors, and upheld in their separation from the Greek church. They have long since fallen into stagnation, ignorance, and superstition, and are to Christendom as a praying corpse to a living man. They are isolated fragments of the ancient church history, and curious petrifactions from the Christological battle fields of the fifth and sixth centuries, coming to view amidst Mohammedan scene?. But Providence haa preserved them, like the Jews, and doubtless not without de-
774 THIED PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
sign, through storms of war and persecution, uncharged UJitil the present time. Tiieir very hatred of the orthodox Greek 'ihurch makes them more accessible both to Protestant and Roman missions, and to the influences of Western Christianity and Western civilization.
On the other hand, they are a door for Protestantism to the Arabs and the Turks ; to the former through the Jacobites, to ^he latter through the Armenians. There is the more reason to hope for their conversion, because the Mohammedana despise the old Oriental ciiurches, and must be won, if at all, by a purer type of Christianity. In this respect the American missions among the Armenians in the Turkish empire, are, like those among the Nestorians in Persia, of great prospective importance, as outposts of a religion which is destined sooner or later to regenerate the East.
With the exception of the Chalcedonian Christology, which they reject as Nestorian heresy, most of the doctrines, institutions, and rites of the Monophysite sects are common to them with the orthodox Greek church. They reject, or at least do not recognize, the jilioque / they hold to the mass, or the Eucharistic sacrifice, witli a kind of transubstantiation ; leavened bread in the Lord's Supper ; baptismal regeneration by trine immersion ; seven sacraments (yet not explicitly, since they either have no definite term for sacrament, or no settled conception of it) ; the patriarchal polity ; monasticism ; pilgrimages, and fastiiig ; the requisition of a single marriage for priests and deacons (bishops are not allowed to marry);' the prohibition of the eating of blood or of things strangled.'' On the other hand, they know nothing of purgatory and indulgences, and have a simj)ler worship than the Greeks and Romans. According to their doctrine, all men after death go into Hades, a place alike without sorrow or joy ; after the general judgment they enter into heaven or are cast into hell; and meanwhile the intercessions and pious works of the living
* Laymen are allowed to marry twice, but a third marriage is regarded as fornioation.
• Comp, Acts XV. 20. The Latin church saw in this ordinance of the aposiolii council merely a temporary measure during tlie exia'cnce of Jewish Christianity.