“320 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 
fome of my readers were | to pafs this fubject without 
notice. 
TueErr firft bifhop, Frumentius, being ordained about the 
-vear 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 
Abyflinians, which they received on their converfion to 
Chriftianity, 1s 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. 
FruMENTIvs 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 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 thofe times, and efpecial- 
ly the two words Nature and Perfon, than which no two 
words were ever more equivocal in every language in which — 
they have been tranflated. Either of thefe words, in our 
own language, is a fufficient example of what I have faid; 
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 
