thy letter be sent unto me, in the city | the glory of the Lord was made known, of Palamcottah. Written in the land of Coromandel, nigh unto the city of Alumbura. (Signed) REGINALD, BISHOP. LETTER TO MAR PHILOXENUS. Sent March 27, 1826. I have heard from many witnesses, my brother beloved in the Lord, of the works which thou hast wrought, and thy deep tribulation, and thy labour of love which hath been shown towards the Church of Christ among the Malayalims, at a time when no tidings came from the Church which is at Antioch, and there were many dangers and much sorrow without and within, on the right hand and on the left, from the idolatrous people and the false brethren. Likewise how thou hast made choice of a wise and holy man, even the brother Dionysius, to judge the people in thy room, and to teach them the pure and certain doctrine of the Lord, and that thou hast sealed him to the work by the laying on of hands, to the intent that the grace which was given thee might not perish, but that, after thy decease, a witness of the truth might not be wanting in Israel, until the time that the Lord of the vineyard shall return to reckon with his servants. not there only, but in Britain also, which is our own land; where the blessed Apostle Paul, after he had been in Spain, in times past preached the Gospel, even as the Apostle Thomas did with you, whose memory is at this day blessed among the Churches of India. For which cause also, the holy Father in Christ, the Patriarch of Antioch, having heard of your love and the truth To the honoured among Bishops, Phi- and patience of your brethren, sent our loxenus, raised up of God to be a guide brother Athanasius to carry his letters and shepherd to the Churches of India to you, and to testify unto you all the which hold the Syrian confession, Re- | things which were in his heart as a ginald, by Divine permission, Bishop of faithful Bishop and Evangelist; at Calcutta, wisheth health, grace, and whose coming, when I heard the same much prosperity from God and our in Bombay, my heart greatly rejoiced, Lord Jesus. hoping that, by communication with him, yourself and your flock might be the more established in faith, and that love might increase more exceedingly with all knowledge. Whence then is it, my brethren, that there are wars and envyings among you? God is a God of peace, not of division; a God of order, not of disorder; and by all these things the name of Christ is blasphemed among the Gentile, and the souls of many shall be turned into perilous heresies; such as are taught by the priests of the Bishop of Rome, which are in Cranganore and Verapoli, from whom, in time past, great sorrow hath arisen to this people. Let me entreat you, then, my brethren, on Christ's behalf, that you be reconciled one to another, in honour preferring one another, and each desirous to take the lowest room, to the end that ye may reap an exceeding weight of glory hereafter. And forasmuch as the people are divided, and this man is of Philoxenus, and that followeth after Athanasius, my counsel is that the multitude must needs come together, and that the priests of the order of Aaron and the holy Levites, which are the deacons, be called into one place to declare openly, according to the knowledge given unto them, what hath been the custom of your fathers, and whom they will obey as their Bishop and faithful shepherd. Like as it is written, "if thou hast anything against thy brother, tell it unto the Church, and he Which thing also was made known to the blessed Father in God, Thomas Middleton, who, before my weakness came hither, was Bishop of Calcutta and the Churches of the English in India, who beheld also your order and the grace of God which was among you, and was glad, and spake thereof unto all the chief of our nation. Insomuch that in the land of Feringistan, which is Chittim, and Ashkenaz, and Gomer, that will not hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican." At which time, I also, if it seemeth good unto your discretion, will be present with you in Cotym, not as a ruler, for I am a stranger among you, nor as a judge, for who am I that I should judge any but mine own people? but as a brother in Christ, and a faithful witness of that which shall be determined, and who may plead the cause of your nation with the Queen of Travancore, and with the most excellent Governor whom the King of England hath set over his cities in India. And forasmuch as it is slanderously reported of thee that thou art no Bishop indeed, let this thing be also inquired into at the mouth of two or three witnesses, and let not thy heart be troubled in that I have known our brother Athanasius in Bombay; for I have purposed, by God's grace, to know no man after the flesh, but to walk in these things according to the will of God, and the tradition of the Churches, and to speak peace, if it may be so, to both of you (are ye not both brothers?), and to acknowledge him, if difference must be made, whom your people shall freely choose to rule over them; and within forty days I trust to be strengthened to come unto you. Brethren, pray for me! Salute our brother, Bishop Dionysius, in my name, salute the brethren which are with you, the Malpans, Catanars, and deacons, with all others of the Church. Salute our brother Athanasius. God grant that ye may be at unity with each other. The brethren which are with me, even Thomas Robinson (which was in time past known unto the Bishop Dionysius) and John Doran, salute you. Grace, mercy, and peace be with you and in the Israel of God! Amen. COPY OF A LETTER FROM THE REV. | Bishop of the English Churches in India, sendeth greeting and reverence. I am not worthy to write unto thy Eminence, forasmuch as thy order in the Church of our Lord Jesus is the highest, and mine the most humble; yet since God hath thought me worthy to serve his honoured and blessed servant, Mar Reginald, the Bishop of our Church in India, I pray thee to receive my words as the words of him who was my master and my brother. The rather is it my duty to write to thee, because there were many things which were in his heart to say unto thee, and he was meditating a letter of peace to thee at the very time when the Great Master of all, the Chief Shepherd, called him to his eternal reward. With thy permission, therefore, I will relate to thy wisdom what things he had already done towards thy Churches in India, and what was farther in his mind to do. It is not unknown to thee, most reverend Father, from the information of the reverend Legate and Metropolitan of thy Churches in Malabar, Mar Athanasius, that he met our blessed father, Mar Reginald, at Bombay soon after Pentecost, in the last year (1825), and, as one bishop with another, partook of the holy mysteries with him at the altar of the English Church dedicated to St. Thomas in that city. Mar Reginald showed great affection to Mar Athanasius in return for his love to him, and gave him letters to several persons of distinction among the English in this country, commending him to them as Metropolitan and Supreme Bishop of the Syrian Churches in India. After that time he saw his face GO more, but he always remembered the brotherly intercourse that was between them; and when he wrote an account of his diocese to the Most Reverend and Excellent Mar Carolus, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan of all the Churches of the English nation, he made mention therein of Mar Athana THOMAS ROBINSON TO MAR IGNA sius, and his mission from your Emi TIUS GEORGIUS, PATRIARCH OF AN- 1826. THE presbyter, Thomas Robinson, nence, and how, by his means, an end would be put to the irregularities that had heretofore prevailed in the Church of the Apostle Thomas at Malabar. Also, when an English priest, Johannes Doran by name, came to him at Calcutta five months after, desiring to proceed to Malabar, our blessed Father gave him a letter to Mar Athanasius, requesting him to allow him permission to reside among his people, and to receive him as a son for his own sake. This letter I have now at length the satisfaction of sending to the care of your Eminency, and I will now relate from what cause, and in what manner, it was most unfortunately detained so long from the hands of Mar Athanasius, for our blessed Father most earnestly desired it should be delivered without delay, since it would, in all probability, have prevented his departure from the country, and healed the disorders and schisms that now so wretchedly divide your Church in India. When the priest, Johannes Doran, had gone from Calcutta to Madras, on his way to the country of Malabar, he heard, for the first time, that there were dissensions between the Indian Bishops and the Metropolitan from Antioch, and, being a stranger, he was advised by some persons that he should avoid taking any part in such controversies, even such as might seem just to him. Therefore, and on account of his health, he remained at Madras for two months, till the end of the month of February in this year, when Mar Reginald arrived there on his visitation to the southern part of his diocese. It gave him great grief to find that Johannes had delayed his progress, although he had given him letters to Mar Athanasius, as the head of those Churches, in which also he had included another letter written by Abrahim Abuna, a legate from the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, to Mar Athanasius. As soon as he obtained these letters again from the hands of Johannes, on the 4th day of March, he sent them to Travancore, to be delivered into the Metropolitan's hands. He also sent answers to letters he had received from that land, in which he exhorted all who were subject to his authority, to reverence the ancient canons and usages of the Syrian Church, and to know him as the rightful head and Metropolitan of the faithful In dians in Malabar, who had been received as such agreeable to your Eminency's letters, in a general convocation of the Church summoned at Cotym on December 29th, 1825, by the Bishop Mar Philoxenus. He also expressly and earnestly desired all these his children not to interpose the authority of the heathen government in Travancore, as defining anything in the affairs of the Church, but to suffer all things to continue as they were from the old time, even since the heathen princes gave the Syrian Churches of Malabar independent privileges, the people choosing their ecclesiastical governors according to the rites and usages which they held from the day of the blessed Apostle St. Thomas to this time, the government allowing their elections, and receiving those they elected, while they thus rendered to Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's, and to God the things which were God's. And forasmuch as it had been reported to Mar Reginald, that Mar Athanasius had acted violently in the Church, depriving those that had been formerly accounted bishops, and despising the authority of the rulers of the land, our blessed Father was very careful to inquire into this matter, that he might represent it truly to all the deputies of the governors of the English in that land. In the mean time, the letter of Mar Athanasius to him, written one month before, which had been ignorantly sent to Calcutta, was given to him at Madras, and to this letter he sent an answer in the Syriac language on the 22nd of March, which also I now enclose to your Eminency, wherein he assured him of his unaltered friendship, exhorted him to mildness and forbearance till he should come, and, with his permission and good-will, mediate between him and those in Travancore who supported the Indian Bishops, assuring him also that he would not leave unpunished those who behaved unjustly or unkindly to him in any way. And Mar Reginald acted even as he had wrote, and he obtained a promise from the excellent Governor of the English at Madras, that he would confirm whatever appointment he thought good respecting the peace of the Church in Malabar. And your Excellency will see, by his letters to both sides, that he intended that Mar Athanasius should be acknowledged as Metropolitan by all those who had power, and that the Indian Bishops, when it should be seen they were truly such, should receive honour and maintenance as his suffragans. In this belief and intention he wrote also a letter of friendship and brotherly love to Mar Philoxenus, as one Bishop to another, exhorting him to receive Athanasius, as sent by your Eminency, to rule them. I send a copy of that letter to your Eminency. I beg your Eminency's wise and careful attention to this account, and of the truth of it I myself am witness, for I wrote with my own hand the two letters to Mar Athanasius, and have been near to our blessed father as his Ramban and Secretary during all these transactions. Your wisdom will judge from this, with what grief and surprise Mar Reginald heard the events that took place at the same time at Travancore. These events there is no need that I relate, as your Eminency has heard them clearly from Mar Athanasius himself; but the thing which gives most grief to the hearts of all who love the memory and rejoiced in the plans of our late blessed Father in Christ, is that his two letters to Mar Athanasius were not received. The first letter which, as I have mentioned, was sent on the 4th of March, must have arrived at Travancore either on the same day Mar Athanasius was arrested by the Divan, and banished the country, or at least the day after; yet the letter was not sent after him to Cochin, where he remained many days. Nor was it told to Mar Reginald that his letter had not been delivered till many days after it had arrived at Travancore, and this news not coming to the Bishop till after Easter at Tanjore, no remedy was found for the evil, much less was the second letter delivered, which was written, as I have mentioned, twenty days later than the other. But as soon as Mar Reginald heard, as he did in the Passion-week, that the Metropolitan had been arrested by order of the heathen Government, he immediately wrote a letter to the British Deputy in Travancore, Colonel Newall, who was then living at some distance in the mountains of the north. In that letter he supplicated him to stop all these proceedings against Mar Athanasius, to wait for his coming before he listened to any accusation against the person bearing the commission of your Eminency, and recognized in that character, as he had no doubt he soon would be by all of the faithful in Malabar. He reminded him moreover how infamous it would be to the English nation, if we should admit, in any degree, the accursed practices which we all condemn in the disciples of the corrupt Church of Rome, in their conduct towards the Legates from Syria, who came to the ancient Churches, which Divine Providence had now placed under our civil government and protection. Our blessed Father Mar Reginald lived not long after the writing of that excellent letter. It was his mind to have followed it up by a letter to your Eminency, and by other acts calculated to ensure the peace of your Church at Malabar, when it pleased his heavenly Father to call him to himself. The letter was, however, received by Colonel Newall, who immediately sent orders to the Divan of Travancore, to stay all farther proceedings against Mar Athanasius, and to authorize his return to the country. That letter arriving after the death of Mar Reginald was opened and read by me, alas! the news had already arrived from Travancore, that Mar Athanasius had already sailed from Cochin, and consequently that these orders of the Resident came too late. It would ill become me, most reverend Father, to obtrude any counsel of mine upon your Eminency, in an affair where the peace of your Church is so nearly concerned. Suffer me, however, to give you what are not mine, but the ideas of my honoured Father in the Lord, whose nearest wish after the prosperity of his own children, and the extension of the Gospel of the Lord by their means, was to preserve the integrity of the Church subjected to your Eminency's rule in But, the land of Malabar. It appeared, then, to Mar Reginald, from very strict and accurate inquiries made into the truth of the circumstances, not only from those resident in Cotym, but from others also, that when the last Prelates (on whom be the peace of God) came from Syria to Malabar, Mar Gregorius of Jerusalem, Mar Basilius Maphiran, and Mar Johannes, they encountered the like opposition from the ambition of the Indian Bishop Mar Thona and his nephew, that Mar Athanasius has to encounter from the ignorance and prejudice of those opposed to him. Nevertheless, as disciples of Him who was lowly and meek in heart, and who, by His own mouth and that of His holy Apostles, has taught us not to render evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good, they, after more than eighteen years' quarrelling, procured the younger Indian Bishop to be submissive to their will, and (Mar Basilius being dead) Mar Gregorius consecrated him and honoured him with the title of Metropolitan, by the name of Dionysius. All this is not unknown to your Eminency, but besides this it is also true that there was a young Indian priest, who, during all these troubles and contentions, had remained faithful to the just cause of the Syrian Prelates from Antioch. Him, therefore, during those troubles, Mar Basilius had consecrated Bishop, by the name of Cyrillus. And it is said also, though with what truth I know not certainly, that when Mar Gregorius had given the title of Metropolitan to Dionysius, and when Mar Dionysius afterwards refused to give him the maintenance he agreed to give, then Mar Gregorius gave the same title of Metropolitan to the aforesaid Cyrillus. However this may be as to his dignity of Metropolitan, or whatever right this may have conferred upon him, it is the confession of all in Malabar, of every party, that he was truly a Bishop by the consecration of Mar Basilius. That Cyrillus, as is sufficiently attested, consecrated another priest before his death, A.D. 1805, by the name of Philoxenus, who again, in 1812, consecrated in the same manner him who now lives, and is called Mar | Philoxenus. Now, though the title of Metropolitan is wrongly assumed by that Prelate, and the others whom he has consecrated, and ignorantly allowed them by the heathen governors of the land, it will not be doubtful to your Eminency that they are real Bishops, though there were not the number of prelates present at the consecration which the Holy Canons ordinarily require. But in a barbarous land, where Bishops are very few, where intercourse with the see of Antioch was interrupted and difficult, it may seem perhaps to your Eminency, as it did to Mar Reginald, that it were better for a Bishop before his death to provide successors for himself, provided the real form of ordination be duly observed, than that the Church should be left entirely destitute of Bishops. More especially when at the demise of the true Metropolitan, more than twelve years ago, there was no provision for the continuance of lawful pastors among the people of Malabar, unless the other successions from Mar Basilius were admitted as true, which continued from Cyrillus to those who are now in Malabar. It was therefore in our blessed Father's mind to entreat your Eminency, and also his right reverend brother Mar Athanasius, to lay aside all prejudices from the reports of ambitious men in India, who often decry in their brethren those things which they only desire for themselves, and that you would consult in these matters what is conducive to the peace, security, and welfare of the Church, not indeed giving place, even for an hour, to those prejudiced or wicked brethren who pretend to set up the right of the heathen magistrates to name Church Governors, against that of the see of Antioch, but not denying even to the gainsaying and the prejudiced, that character which is allowed them by the nation, if it should appear on due examination and trial by the faithful, the priests, and doctors of Malabar, that the character of Bishop does of right belong to them. By these mild means, and by inviting a fair and impartial trial of all doubtful matters, the peace and order of the Church will be best pro |