'261 Account of the Christia}i5 on the Malabar Coast. [July 



usual topics in tlic chuioh, which was filled with furniture and wo- 

 men, he pissed on ilie same night to Ckcfiuree, avillaj>;e in the ter- 

 ritory of Cochin. 



On his onival he found the doors of the churoh closed and the 

 town to all appearance deserted. Beings iniornjcd however that the 

 Archdoav-on was concealed in one of the Ik. uses, he wrote him a 

 Iou'j: tetter, proniisina; to forget all that was past, ;ind entreatintr him 

 to consent to another interview, when he did not donht he should be 

 able to convince him ot lus errors, lie added many promises of 

 preferment if iie sul.Muilted himself to tlie see of Rome. The Arch- 

 deacon after consuiliuii: with his Catanars, consented to the inter- 

 view and wont on hoard the Archbishop's boat. A long conversati- 

 on ensued cuncerniui; the errors of Nestorius, and the supremacy 

 *'f the Roman Pontitl'. On the first point Menezes urged the au- 

 thority of St. Juhn (^i. 14.) by which the Archdeacon appears to 

 have been silenced but not convinced. On the second the Arch- 

 deacon appealed to a letter, preserved in their Archives, of Caius 

 Bishop of Rome, in which he confesses the perfect independence of 

 the two Patriarchates, and also to a letter called the Letter of the 

 Lord's Day*, bc'cause it is said to have fallen from heaven on that 

 day, in which the same truth is affirmed. The conference ended in 

 an ag-reement that a Synod should be assembled to determine all mat- 

 ters of faith ; and that in the mean time the Archbishop should be al- 

 lowed to preach and deliver the benediction, but that he should be re- 

 ceived only as a forei^_,n Bishop, and that he should neither confirm 

 nor perform any other Episcopal office within the diocese. This re- 

 solution was signed by the Archbishop, the Archdeacon and the Ca- 

 tanars. It was further a'^reed that the Synod should be held before 

 Palm Sunday of that year (1599), that the Archdeacon should ac- 

 company the Portuguese Prelate in his visits, and should raise no 

 disturbance in the churches, nor be attended by such numbers of 

 armed men as before. The sequel will shew how these articles were 

 violated by both parties. 



His political engagements obliging him to go to Quilon, he visited 

 the town of Porcoa in his way, and was the first to break the com- 

 pact he had made by administering confirmation in the Church. 

 He repeated the same, with other episcopal acts, soon after at Mo- 



* Mr. Balaze in his remarks on the ordinances of the Kings of France, has 

 printed an Epistle of the Lord's Day, which was well known in the viiith cen- 

 tury. They who brought it to notice, said that it was dictated by our Saviour, 

 "written by an anseh and that it fell from Heaven at Jerusalem. Fabricius 

 has inserted it in his collection of the Apocryphal Writing ot ttie New Testa- 

 ment, p. 309, &c. There is no mention of the Church of Babylon. La Croze. 



