"All Persia, Assyria, Armenia, and Media, the regions about Babylon, Huz, and Gala, to the borders of India, and as far as Gog and Magog" (the country north of the Caucasus,) "received the priesthood from Agæus, a weaver of silk clothing, the disciple of the apostle Thaddeus." SO BAR HEBRÆUS, MARUS of Soba, and ELIAS of Damascus, apud ASSEMAN. vol. iv.

The Syrians hold that Thaddeus, whom they style "the chief and greatest of the assembly of the Seventy and two," was the founder of the church of Edessa. "When he came to that city," says their tradition, "they received him with great joy. He blessed Abgarus and his entire household and the whole city.* He healed their sicknesses by the word of our Lord, and declared the miracles and signs he had wrought in the world, confirming his words by miracles.......................He discipled Edessa and Mesopotamia, and taught them the ordinances of the gospel. With the assistance of Agæus, his disciple, he converted and baptized all the region of the East, as far as the Eastern Sea. When he was grown old and venerable, he improved his talent more than double; he rooted out from the hearts the thorns and thistles, and sowed them with the purest wheat, and entered the joy of his Lord.”

To the same effect the historian AMRUS. "Mar Adæus, one of the Seventy, came to Edessa, and healed king Abgar of his leprosy. At Nisebin, Mosul, Hazath, and in Persia, there were with him, preaching the gospel, Mar Marus and Bar Tholmai. He built a church at Caphar Uzel, in Adjabena,† where is the inscription of his name to this day. He built another church in the

* See further on, article Edessa.

+ Adjabena, Athur, or Atyria, q. d. Assyria, are names for the same region. The modern name, Koordistan, is derived from the Karduchi, a nation which once inhabited the district bordering on Armenia.

city of Arzan, which also bears his name at the present time. St. Thomas assembled with him, and remained with him some time before his departure for India. They both ordained Marus......... Mar Adæus, having fulfilled the office of preaching twelve years and some months, departed,.........and was buried in the great church at Edessa."

BAR HEBRÆUS writes concerning Aghæus, that "he laboured fifteen years in the work of the gospel, and survived his master Adæus only three years." And of Marus, that, "when, after the martyrdom of his companion Aghæus, he could no longer continue in Edessa, he went into the East, and preached in Athur and in the land of Shinar.".........And again, "Marus first discipled some of the people of Beth Garmi.* He afterwards endured great trials from them. He then came to Seleucia.........When he entered the city, there was a sick man there, who, having been signed by him with the sign of the life-giving cross, opened his eyes, and said unto his men, 'I saw a vision of this stranger, as one descended from heaven; and he took me by the hands and raised me up; and as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw him sitting with me.' Then the men of that city received Marus as an angel of God, and he taught and baptized many of them, and began to build churches in that city, where he abode fifteen years, confirming them in the faith. Afterwards he went and passed through all quarters, working miracles and wonderful works; and, having fulfilled his preaching for thirty and three years, he departed to his Lord in a city named Badaraja, and was buried there in a church which he had built."

* Beth Garmi, or Beit Germe, "the place of bones," a district of Koordistan, watered by the rivers Gomela and Hazir. It derives its name from the battle fought there between Darius and Alexander. It became a considerable Nestorian bishopric.

Respecting the correctness of the details given in these accounts, it is impossible with certainty either to affirm or deny. That they substantially record the truth, there cannot be a reasonable doubt; and they thus show, that while the gospel was simultaneously winning its way in Europe, it spread itself eastward "with the rapidity of lightning from Jerusalem to the sun-rising," revealing the mercy of God in Jesus Christ, and announcing, not merely by these holy men, but by a multitude of preachers, whose names have been long forgotten on the earth, the great salvation which is in Him, to a large proportion of the Asiatic nations. Hence Origen, in the third century, could appeal, for the truth of the Christian religion, to the accomplishment of the prophecies that foretold its universal spread. "The church," says he, "is every where visible by its own light, and maintains its oneness, though extended from the east to the west." And Eusebius, employing a similar phraseology, describes the doctrine of the Saviour, with a celestial influence and co-operation, irradiating, like the sunbeams, the human race; the word of the inspired evangelists so going throughout the earth, and their words to the end of the world, that, in rural villages and towered cities alike, there arose the innumerable temples of the living God.

ANTIOCH.

THE city of Antioch, (Antiochia Magna,) on the river Orontes, was founded three hundred years before the Christian era. In its most prosperous days it consisted of four component towns, of which the first had been built by Triptolemus, with the name of Iona; the second by Casus, who brought hither a colony of Candiots; and this branch was called Cassiota; a third portion was added by a colony of Greeks from Peloponnesus, under

the name of Heraclia; and, lastly, Seleucus, who largely augmented it, gave it the appellation by which it has ever since been known. Under the Seleucidæ it became the capital of their great kingdom, and the most powerful city of the east. The population was much increased by the Jews of Palestine, to whom Seleucus not only conceded liberty of worship, but an equality of civil privileges with the other citizens.

But at the beginning of the evangelic era, Antioch had already undergone a comparative decadence, which had followed on the termination of the Seleucidian power, and the conquest of their metropolis by the Romans. It regained its liberty from Pompey and Cæsar by ransom, Augustus confirming its ancient rights; and as it had been the chief city of the Syrian kingdom, so it continued under the Roman sway to be regarded as the capital of the East.

[A good idea of the locality of Antioch may be formed from the graphical description of it, even so late as the eleventh century, by Raymond d'Agiles, a contemporary historian of the crusades:- "Among the mountains of Libanus," says he, "there is a certain plain, the breadth of which takes the traveller a day to cross, and the length a day and a half. This place is bounded on the west by a marsh, and on the east by a river, (the Orontes,) which, sweeping round a part, runs towards the mountains situated to the southern side, so that there is no passage [or, rather, but a narrow one, along which ran the Roman road] between the stream and the mountains, and thus it flows into the Mediterranean Sea, which is near to Antioch. In the straits, which the river makes in running under the mountains, Antioch is situated; so that to the west there is left not more than an arrow's flight of ground between the lower wall and the river. The town, thus situated, rises to the east, and in the

circuit of its walls encloses the peaks of three mountains. That mountain, indeed, which it has to the north, is separated from the others by a great precipice; so that between it and them there is no means, or very difficult means, of communication. The town is two miles in length, and so fortified with walls and towers and outworks, that it fears no force of machines, and no assault of men, even if the whole human race should come against it."]

"The disciBut by

Christianity soon took root in this city. ples were called CHRISTIANS first at Antioch." whom was the seed first sown? Ecclesiastical tradition here refers to St. Peter; and Chrysostom, Jerome, Leo, Innocent, and others, having so delivered it, the opinion that this apostle was the founder and bishop, or, rather, as they would have it believed, the patriarch, of the church of Antioch, has been extensively considered as indisputable. But there is another writer who, in coming to a decision on this point, should not have been overlooked, but consulted and deferred to as having an authority against which there is no appeal: St. Luke, the contemporary of the apostles, the evangelist personally commissioned by Christ, and the divinely-inspired historian of the first planting of his churches. St. Luke, then, in the Acts of the Apostles, gives (chapter xi.) a plain statement of the earliest beginnings of this community. "Now they that were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose" (in Jerusalem) "about Stephen, travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and ANTIOCH, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord." The names of these devoted