70 On the State of the Christians inhabiting 



Hindoo chronology, from the desire which these Christians 

 have to deiive their origin from the earhest possible times, 

 (which may perhaps have introduced false traditions amongst 

 them.) and as all their aiuhcnlic records are reported to have 

 been destroyed during the persecutions of the church of 

 Rome; from all these circua)5tances, whether we refer to 

 the Hindoo accounts, to the St. Thome Christians them- 

 selves, or to their persecutors the Roman catholics, we are 

 not likely to arrive at any certain conclusion as to the exact 

 time of their establishment in Malabar. Some circum- 

 stances, however, may be collected from undoubted autho- 

 rity, by which it may be inferred that they have been for 

 nearly fifteen centuries established in India; for we find in 

 Ecclesiastical History, that at the first council at Nice, in 

 the year 325, a bishop from India was amongst the number 

 composing that memorable synod ; and, in the creeds and 

 doctrines of the Christians of Malabar, internal evidence 

 exists of their being a primitive church ; for the supremacy 

 of the pope is denied, and the doctrine of transubstantiation 

 never has been held by them ; and they regarded, and still 

 regard, the worship of images as idolatrous, and the doc- 

 trine of purgatory to be fabulous : moreover, they never ad- 

 mitted as sacraments extreme unction, marriage, or con- 

 firmation : all which facts may be substantiated on reference 

 to the acts of the synod established by don Alexis de Me- 

 neses, archbishop of Goa, at Udiamper, in the year 1599. 



The history of this council will be found most ably de- 

 tailed in a work primed in French, and entitled " The His- 

 tory of Christianity in India," published at the Hague in the 

 -year 1724 by La Croze, the celebrated librarian to the king 

 of Prussia. 



The object of this work was to deduce, from authentic 

 materials, the rise, progress, and establishment of Chris- 

 tianity in the East; and to hold up to disgrace and to me- 

 rited indignation the bigoted and unworthy conduct of the 

 Roman catholic church in the persecution set on foot by 

 her emissaries, under her avowed sanction, against the pri- 

 mitive Christians who were found settled on, the coast of 



• Malabar; 



