LET US NOT, THEREFORE, 66 unprotestantize" our Catholic Church, but still maintain our protest, as it may be called, contained in the twenty-second of the Thirty-nine Articles; for the Church of England is the really true protestant Church of Christ; and with Jeremy Taylor to consider protestant our name, and catholic our surname; "For the protestant religion,” says Dr. Hickes, "is but another name for PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY, and a protestant for a PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN, who protests against all the CORRUPTIONS of the gospel by popery; and popery having apparently corrupted the gospel in the doctrines of obedience and submission, and the divine authority of the supreme power, especially of kings, they cannot be sound and orthodox protestants who hold the very same destructive principles to regal government, by which the papists have corrupted the gospel in those points."

ALLUDING to the Dissenters and Scotch Covenanters during the grand rebellion, who were taught and prompted by the Jesuits, he continues: "no, they are not sound and orthodox protestants, but protestants popishly affected, PAPISTs under a protestant dress, wolves in sheep's clothing, rebellious and satanical spirits transformed into angels of light. They were such protestants, or protestant Jesuits as these, that formerly set up Jesus amongst us against Cæsar, Christ against His own gospel, the apostles against their own doctrine and practice, and by corrupting and perverting the gospel of peace, brought the people of this nation to turn their ploughshares into swords, and to rise up against the best of princes in the most causeless and unnatural rebellion that ever was in the world."

and

Love, a dissenting minister, said at Uxbridge, January 30, 1644," "Tis the sword, not disputes nor treaties that must end this controversy, wherefore turn your ploughshares into swords, your pruning-hooks into spears, to fight the Lord's battles." And Marshall, another dissenter, in his Panegyric, says, "Christ shed all his blood to save you from hell; venture all yours to set Him on His throne."

THEY ARE NOT true protestant or primitive Christians which are led on by the papists to resist the powers that be; "but," continues Dr. Hickes, "they were such protestants as these [described above] that have made so many protestant plots, raised so many protestant tumults and rebellions, and

committed so many protestant murders and assassinations in these kingdoms, and perhaps shed more protestant blood in them than was shed in the first ten famous persecutions; and, in one word, such protestants, and zealous protestants, who shed the direful blood of this day 1o "

10

THE LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL.

AN AMERICAN gentleman, a Dr. Grant of Utica, has found out the lost tribes, where only they were to be found, in the very place to which they had been originally deported by Pul, Tiglath-Peleser, and Shalmaneser. That is to say, in Assyria Proper to the east ward of the river Euphrates, where they were originally planted, and where they have ever since remained a compact and distinct body. Rabshakeh boasted to Hezekiah that his master Sennacherib had utterly extirpated the land of Gozan and Haran and Rezeph'. Dr. Grant states that Gozan signifies pasture, as does the similar name of Goshen, where the family of Jacob were planted in Egypt. Gozan was inhabited by a fierce and warlike people which had been so troublesome to the kings of Assyria that they had been totally exterminated, which led to Sennacherib's boast uttered by his lieutenant before the walls of Jerusalem. This is a confirmation of that which we formerly said in our first series, that the place from which St. Peter wrote his epistles was the literal Babylon in Assyria, and that he went there as the apostle of the circumcision to feed Christ's sheep. The fruit of his preaching was the body of Christians that are now known by the name of the Nestorians. And these Nestorian Christians are the lost ten tribes.

THIS FACT IS asserted by themselves and admitted by the unconverted Jews that are scattered through all parts of the world. "We have only," says Dr. Grant, "to see the Jews and Nestorians together, and hear their mutual recriminations; the one charging the other with apostacy from their ancient

10 Sermon preached before the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London at Bow Church, on the 30th January, 1681-2, by George Hickes, D.D. sm. 4to. pp. 30, 31. 12 Kings xix. 12.

religion, and the latter accusing the former as the guilty rejectors of the Messiah: and we shall be at no loss how to account for the existing antipathy between the Nestorians and the Jews. I was recently present at just such an interview between them: and it required all the address I was master of to pacify and make them treat each other somewhat like brethren. When this was effected they conversed freely together (though with occasional aspersion,) on the subject of their former fraternal relation as sons of Israel: a relation so fully recognised by both parties as to form the basis of some of their most pointed remarks.”

THE NESTORIANS of this part of Assyria, called Adiabenè, exhibit every feature of the early Hebrew church as it was contradistinguished from the Gentile church; for they unite the observance of the Law with the Gospel and their belief in Christ. They speak a modern dialect of the Syriac. The physiognomy of the whole race, both of the converted and of the unconverted, is decidedly Israelitish. They have, however, no written records of their descent: and when Dr. Grant inquired whether or not they had any such documents to verify their standing tradition of their descent from the ten tribes of Israel, they answered as follows:-"For us such a record is unnecessary, as we are well acquainted with the fact of our Israelitish descent, the account of which is handed down from father to son through successive generations. In our early history, certainly such a record could not have 'been called for: and had any one made it at a later period, we might have suspected some sinister motive. Moreover we consider such a tradition, received by all classes of the people, better testimony than written records, which few could read or understand, and which are liable to be corrupted or lost: whereas our tradition no one can dispute or alter, as it is known to all. We are certainly Beni Israel: there is no doubt of it."

DR. GRANT PROCEEDS, "It is not a complicated history requiring a detail of incidents or language liable to be misapprehended or forgotten. It is one simple bare fact, so unique and prominent in its character that there is no room for mistake. At the same time, the people are so peculiar in their language, character, and circumstances, that it was

doubtless true of the whole, if of any. It is one simple FACT: that the NESTORIANS are what they profess to be, the CHILDREN OF ISRAEL."

HE FURTHER SAYS, "Direct and positive as is the testimony of the Nestorians themselves respecting their Hebrew ancestry we need not rest so important a question on their testimony alone. We shall now bring forward witnesses, whose competency none will dispute, and whose testimony is no less unequivocal and positive than that of the Nestorians themselves. The Jews who dwell among them, acknowledge the relationship. They admit that the Nestorians are as truly the descendants of the Israelites as themselves. Do they not know? Or is it possible that the great mass of the ten tribes were converted to Christianity without their knowledge? Providentially for our cause, the ten tribes are not all nominally Christian. A remnant seems to have been left as witnesses in the case. Dispersed through the country of the Nestorians, and surrounding them on every side, are some thousands of nominal Jews still adhering to Judaism, who claim to be a part of the ten tribes carried away captive by the kings of Assyria. These are the witnesses now on the stand. They testify, though sometimes reluctantly, that they and the Nestorians are brethren of the same stock; that they and the Nestorians have a common relation to the house of Israel, a common origin. We cannot charge these Jews with interested motives in giving their testimony. They are ashamed to admit that such an apostacy has taken place from the faith of their fathers; and they are reluctant to acknowledge their worst enemies as brethren. So strong is this feeling that they will sometimes prevaricate: and they finally give only an equivocal answer, when questioned upon the subject. It is only to those who have gained their confidence, that they readily make the acknowledgement: and then it is often done in a confidential manner, that they may not fall under the cen sure of their brethren for confirming such a fact. The first time I myself heard this testimony given by the Jews was March 6, 1840, which I recorded at the time as follows.

"RECEIVED a visit from two learned Jews Ezekiel and Daniel of Ooroomiah: who in presence of the bishops Mar Yoosuph and Mar Elijah, two priests and other Nestorians,

most explicitly acknowledged that the Nestorians were the sons of Israel; a circumstance with which, as they affirmed, the Jews were well acquainted. Priest Dunka for my sake then asked them if they were sure of the fact. And they replied emphatically, that they knew that the Nestorians were children of Israel; but as the Nestorians had departed from the faith of their fathers, their people were ashamed to own them as brethren." 229

THE CHIEF RABBI of the Jews in that quarter assured Dr. Grant of the Hebrew origin of the Nestorians, and said that they "had apostatised from the Jewish faith in the days of Christ and His apostles." Their early conversion to Christianity may be accounted for, from the return to their own country of the Parthians and Medes and Elamites who were "pricked in their hearts" at St. Peter's sermon and were then converted to the obedience of the faith. Among the three thousand converts there were doubtless many of the dispersed Israelites that had come up to the holy city at the feast, who would carry back the glad tidings to their countrymen. And again, St. Peter's labours among them would complete the removal of that blindness from the remnant according to the election of grace to which St. Paul alludes in his epistle to the Romans. St. Jude also addresses his epistle not only to the Jews but likewise to the converted of all the twelve tribes of Israel wherever portions of them might be scattered. There are repeated prophecies in Scripture that the remnant of Israel shall be brought out of Assyria. Isaiah says "that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people which shall be left from Assyria . . . . and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. And there shall be an highway for the remnant of His people which shall be left, from Assyria." It is evident, therefore, that they could not be brought out of Assyria unless they were in it. But the way must first be prepared for that event by the downfal of Mohammedism, and as the Ottoman empire seems fast crumbling into ruins it is reasonable to hope that the period of their return to their own land with the dispersed of Judah cannot be far distant.

2 Isaiah xi. 10-16.