The Book of Religions: Comprising the Views, Creeds, Sentiments, or Opinions, of All the Principal Religious Sects in the World, Particularly of All Christian Denominations in Europe and America, to Which are Added Church and Missionary Statistics, Together With Biographical SketchesHayward, John
Religion
The Book of Religions: Comprising the Views, Creeds, Sentiments, or Opinions, of All the Principal Religious Sects in the World, Particularly of All Christian Denominations in Europe and America, to Which are Added Church and Missionary Statistics, Together With Biographical Sketches
Hayward, John
Christian biography; Religions; Sects
The decision of the council of Ephesus caused many difficulties in the
church; and the friends of Nestorius carried his doctrines through all the
Oriental provinces, and established numerous congregations, professing an
invincible opposition to the decrees of the Ephesian council. Nestorianism
spread rapidly over the East, and was embraced by a large number of the
oriental bishops. Barsumas, bishop of Nisibis, labored with great zeal and
activity to procure for the Nestorians a solid and permanent footing in
Persia; and his success was so remarkable that his fame extended
throughout the East. He established a school at Nisibis, which became very
famous, and from which issued those Nestorian doctors who, in that and the
following centuries, spread abroad their tenets through Egypt, Syria,
Arabia, India, Tartary, and China.
The Nestorian church is Episcopal in its government, like all the other
Oriental churches. Its doctrines, also, are, in general, the same with
those of those churches, and they receive and repeat, in their public
worship, the Nicene creed. Their _distinguishing_ doctrines appear to be,
their believing that Mary was not the mother of Jesus Christ, _as God_,
but only _as man_, and that there are, consequently, _two persons_, as
well as _two natures_, in the Son of God. This notion was looked upon in
the earlier ages of the church as a most momentous error; but it has in
later times been considered more as an error of words than of doctrine;
and that the error of Nestorius was in the words he employed to express
his meaning, rather than in the doctrine itself. While the Nestorians
believe that Christ had _two natures_ and _two persons_, they say “that
these natures and persons are so closely and intimately united that they
have but one _aspect_.” “Now, the word _barsopa_, by which they express
this _aspect_, is precisely of the same signification with the Greek word
προσωπον, which signifies _a person_; and hence it is evident that they
attached to the word _aspect_ the same idea that we attach to the word
_person_, and that they understood, by the word _person_, precisely what
we understand by the term _nature_.”
The Nestorians, of all the Christian churches of the East, have been the
most careful and successful in avoiding a multitude of superstitious
opinions and practices, which have infected the Romish and many Eastern
churches.
Our readers are referred to an interesting volume recently published by
Asahel Grant, M. D., in which is contained strong evidence that the
Nestorians and the “Lost Tribes” are one people.
HIGH-CHURCHMEN.
A term first given to the Nonjurors, who refused to acknowledge William
III. as their lawful king, and who had very proud notions of church power;
but it is now commonly used in a more extensive signification, and is
applied to all those who, though far from being Nonjurors, yet form high
conceptions of the authority and jurisdiction of the church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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