-2c TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



fome of my readers were I to pafs this fubject without 

 notice. 



Their firfl bifliop, Frumentius, being ordained about the 

 year 333, and inftructed in the religion of the Greeks of the 

 church of Alexandria by St Athanafms, then fitting in the 

 chair of St Mark, it follows that the true religion of the 

 Abyflinians, which they received on their converfion to 

 Chriftianity, is that of the Greek church ; and every rite or 

 ceremony in the Abyflinian church may be found and tra- 

 ced up to its origin in the Greek church while both of them 

 were orthodox. 



Frumentius preferved Abyflinia untainted with herefy 

 till the day of his death. We find, from a letter preferved 

 in the works of St Athanafms ,that Conftantius, the heretical 

 Greek emperor, wiihed St Athanafms to deliver him up, 

 which that patriarch refufed to do : indeed at that time it 

 was not in his power. 



Soon after this, Arianifm, and a number of other here- 

 fies, 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 thoie times, and efpecial- 

 ly the two words Nature and Perfon, than which no two 

 words were evermore equivocal in every language in which 

 they have been tranllated. Either of thefe words, in our 

 own language, is a fufficient example of what I have laid ; 

 and in fact we have adopted them from the Latin. If we 

 had adopted the fignification of thefe words in religion from 

 the Greek, and applied the Latin words of Perfon and Na- 



3 ture 



