“The creed which these representatives of an ancient line of Christians cherished was not in conformity with papal decrees, and has with difficulty been squared with the thirty-nine articles of the Anglican episcopacy. Separated from the western world for a thousand years, they were naturally ignorant of many novelties introduced by the councils and decrees of the Lateran; and _their conformity with the faith and practice of the first ages_, laid them open to the unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism, as estimated by the church of Rome. ‘We are Christians and not idolaters,’ was their expressive reply when required to do homage to the image of the Virgin Mary.... La Croze states them at fifteen hundred churches, and as many towns and villages. They refused to recognize the pope, and declared they had never heard of him; they asserted the purity and primitive truth of their faith since they came, and their bishops had for thirteen hundred years been sent from the place where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians.”[942] The Sabbatarian character of these Christians is hinted by Mr. Yeates. He says that Saturday “amongst them is a festival day, _agreeable to the ancient practice of the church_.”[943] “The ancient practice of the church,” as we have seen, was to hallow the seventh day in memory of the Creator’s rest. This practice has been suppressed wherever the great apostasy has had power to do it. But the Christians of the East Indies, like those of Abyssinia, have lived sufficiently remote from Rome to be preserved in some degree from its blasting influence. The same fact is further hinted by the same writer in the following language:— “The inquisition was set up at Goa in the Indies, at the instance of Francis Xaverius [a famous Romish saint] who signified by letters to Pope John III., Nov. 10, 1545, ‘That the JEWISH WICKEDNESS spread every day more and more in the parts of the East Indies subject to the kingdom of Portugal, and therefore he earnestly besought the said king, that to cure so great an evil he would take care to send the office of the inquisition into those countries.’”[944] “The Jewish wickedness” was doubtless the observance of Saturday as “a festival day agreeable to the ancient practice of the church” of which this author had just spoken. The history of the past, as we have seen, shows the hatred of the papal church toward the Sabbath. And the struggle of that church to suppress the Sabbath in Abyssinia, and to subject that people to the pope which at this very point of time was just commencing, shows that the Jesuits would not willingly tolerate Sabbatic observance in the East Indies, even though united with the observance of Sunday also.