before the Abouna to be admonished because “they had pertinaciously clung to the abolished dogma of the three births of Christ.”[184] The penalty which they incurred “consisted of several months’ successive fasts, divers fines, and the promise of the _giraffe_.” For a detailed account of Abyssinian Christianity and ecclesiastical history, reference should be made to the books already mentioned in this volume—Bruce, Gobat, Harris, Lobo, Legrand, Stern, Dufton, Plowden, and Parkyns especially—and to the works of F. Alvarez[185] and Job Ludolphus.[186] A digest of the writings of the early travellers and missionaries in Abyssinia was published by F. Balthazar Tellez, and translated into English by John Stevens (1710). Mention has already been made of the Falashas (Jews) of Abyssinia. These people, said Stern, “claiming a lineal descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, pride themselves on the fame of their progenitors and the purity of the blood that circulates in their own veins. Intermarriages with those of another tribe or creed are strictly interdicted,[187] nay, even the visit to an unbeliever’s house is a sin, and subjects the transgressor to the penance of a thorough lustration and a complete change of dress before he can return to his own home. Their stern uncompromising sectarian spirit has been highly beneficial in excluding from their community that licentious profligacy in which all the other inhabitants of Ethiopia riot; and it is generally admitted that Falasha men and women seldom, if ever, stray from the path of virtue, or transgress the solemn law of the decalogue.”[188]