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The heretics are now discovered! Anathema to the Nestorians! Let them depart from the synod! Let them repair to Rome." The legates threatened, the emperor was absolute, and a committee of eighteen bishops prepared a new decree, which was imposed on the reluctant assembly.

Thus they gave out, that Sartach was a Christian, and they propagated similar stories of Mangu-khan, and even of Con-khan, merely because these princes shewed great respect to the Christians. The story of King John had no better foundation; for when I travelled through his territories, no one there knew any thing at all about him, except only a few Nestorians.

The pepper coast of Malabar, and the isles of the ocean, Socotora and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing multitude of Christians; and the bishops and clergy of those sequestered regions derived their ordination from the Catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age the zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians.

The Nestorians and Saracens are intermixed with them as strangers, as far as Kathay, in which country the Nestorians inhabit fifteen cities, and have a bishop in a city called Segan . These Nestorians are very ignorant, for they say their service in the Syrian tongue, in which all their holy books are written, and of which language they are entirely ignorant, and sing their service as our monks do who have not learnt Latin.

In the early days of the Church were seen the wrangling of sects, the incomprehensible jargon of Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monotheists, Monophysites, Mariolatrists, etc. Today we behold the incomprehensible jargon of the first-mentioned sects. Christ, born of an immaculate virgin, died for mankind, arose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven.

The royal convert was indulged in the use of a portable altar; but he despatched an embassy to the patriarch, to inquire how, in the season of Lent, he should abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate the Eucharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine. In their progress by sea and land, the Nestorians entered China by the port of Canton and the northern residence of Sigan.

The number of three hundred thousand is allowed for the whole body of the Nestorians, who, under the name of Chaldeans or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity. According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was preached in India by St. Thomas.

The Nestorians, of course, adopted the philosophy of Aristotle, and translated the works of that great writer into Syriac and Persian. They also made similar translations of later works, such as those of Pliny. In connection with the Jews they founded the medical college of Djondesabour.

The Moal fell sick and died there, and Vestacius sent back the golden tablet by the servants of the Moal, whom I met at Assron, in the entrance into Turkey, and from them I learnt all that happened to Theodolus. Of a Grand Feast given by Mangu-khan and of the Ceremonies of the Nestorians.

I was much at a loss how to act, as the Nestorians entreated me to celebrate the festival, and I had neither vestments, chalice, nor altar.