pu

atoned for all his wickedness if he leaves a fund to build a church, or has built one in his life-time. The king builds many. Wherever a victory is gained, there a church is erected in the very field stinking with the trid bodies of the flain. Formerly this was only the cafe when the enemy was Pagan or Infidel; now the fame is obferved when the victories are over Christians. The fituation of a church is always chofen near running water, for the convenience of their purifications and ablutions, in which they obferve ftrictly the Levitical law. They are always placed upon the top of fome beautiful, round hill, which is furrounded entirely with rows of the oxycedrus, or Virginia cedar, which grows here in great beauty and perfection, and is called Arz. There is nothing adds fo much to the beauty of the country as thefe churches and the plantations about them. In the middle of this plantation of cedars is interfperfed, at proper diftances, a number of those beautiful trees called Cuffo, which grow very high, and are all extremely picturefque.

The churches are all round, with thatched roofs; their fummits are perfect cones; the outfide is furrounded by a number of wooden pillars, which are nothing else than the trunks of the cedar-tree, and are placed to fupport the edifice, about eight feet of the roof projecting beyond the wall of the church, which forms an agreeable walk, or colonade, around it in hot weather, or in rain. The infide of the church is in feveral divifions, according as is prefcribed by the law of Moses. The firt is a circle fomewhat wider than the inner one; here the congregation fit and pray. Within this is a fquare, and that fquare is divided by a veil or curtain, in which is another very fmall divifion anfwering to the holy of holies. This is fo narrow, that none but the priefs can go into it. You are bare-footed, whenever you enter the church; and, if bare-footed, you may go through every part of it, if you have any fuch curiofity, provided you are pure, that is, have not been concerned with women for twenty-four hours before, or touched carrion or dead bodies, (a curious affemblage of ideas,) for in that cafe you are not to go within

the

the precincts, or outer circumference of the church, but ftand and fay your prayers at an awful distance among the cedars.

Every person of both fexes, under Jewish difqualifications, are obliged to observe this distance; and this is always a place belonging to the church, where, unless in Lent, you see the greateft part of the congregation; but this is left to your own confcience'; and, if there was either great inconvenience in the one fituation, or great fatisfaction in the other, the case would be otherwife.

On your first entering the church, you put off your fhoes; but you muft leave a fervant there with them, or elfe they will be ftolen, if good for any thing, by the priests and monks before you come out of the church. At entering you kiss the threshold, and the two door-posts, go in and fay what prayer you please; that finished, you come out again, and your duty is over. The churches are full of pictures, painted on parchment, and nailed upon the walls, in a manner little less flovenly than you fee paltry prints in beggarly country ale-houfes. There has been always a fort of painting known among the scribes, a daubing much inferior to the worst of our fignpainters. Sometimes, for a particular church, they get a number of pictures of faints, on skins of parchment, ready finished from Cairo, in a stile very little fuperior to thefe performances of their own. They are placed like a frieze, and hung in the upper part of the wall. St. George is generally there with his dragon, and St. Demetrius fighting a lion. There is no choice in their faints; they are both of the Old and New Teftament, and those that might be dispensed with from both. There is St. Pontius Pilate and his wife; there is St. Balaam and his afs; St. Samson and his jaw-bone; and fo of the rest. But the thing that surprised Mr. Bruce moft was a kind of fquare miniature upon the front of the head-piece, or mitre, of the priest, adminiftring the facrament at Adowa, reprefenting Pharaoh on a white horfe plunging in the Red Sea, with many guns and pistols swimming upon the furface of it around him.

Nothing emboffed, nor in relief, ever appears in any of their churches; all this would be reckoned idolatry, fo much fo, that they do not wear a cross, as has been repre

2

fented,

fented, on the top of the ball of the fendick, or standard, because it cafts a fhade; but there is no doubt that pictures have been used in their churches from the very earlieft age of Chriftianity.

The articles of the faith of the Abyffinians have been inquired into and difcuffed with fo much keenefs in the beginning of this century, that Mr. Bruce fears he fhould disoblige fome of his readers were he to pass this fubject without notice.

Their first bishop, Frumentius, being ordained about the year 333, and inftructed in the religion of the Greeks of the church of Alexandria by St. Athanafius, then fitting in the chair of St. Mark, it follows that the true religion of the Abyffinians, which they received on their converfion to Christianity, is that of the Greek church; and every rite or ceremony in the Abyffinian church may be found and traced up to its origin in the Greek church while both of them were orthodox. Frumentius preferved Abyffinia untainted with herefy till the day of his death. We find from a letter preferved in the works of St. Athanafius, that Conftantius, the heretical Greek emperor, wifhed St. Athanafius to deliver him up, which that patriarch refused to do; indeed, at that time, it was not in his power.

Soon after this, Arianism, and a number of other herefies, each in their turn, were brought by the monks from Egypt, and infected the church of Abyffinia. A great part of thefe herefies, in the beginning, were certainly owing to the difference of the languages in those times, and especially the two words Nature and Perfon, than which no two words were ever more equivocal in every language in which they have been tranflated.

It was fettled by the first general council, that one baptifm only was neceffary for the regeneration of man, for freeing him from the fin of our first parents, and lifting him under the banner of CHRIST.-"I confefs one baptifm for the remiffion of fins," fays the Symbol. It was maintained by the Jefuits, that in Abyffinia, once every year, they baptifed all grown people, or adults. Mr. Bruce here relates what he himself faw on the spot.

The fmall river, running between the town of Adowa and the church, had been dammed up for several

days;