254 
DISSERTATION ON THE 
monies ; with altering their fasts, and denying them a participation 
in the holy supper; with burning their altars, and consecrating 
new ones ; but they were absurd enough, which more particularly 
incensed the people, to treat them all as pagans or idolaters, by 
insisting on their re-baptism and the re-ordination of their priests ; 
thus unnecessarily heaping, as their king complains in one of his 
letters, baptism on baptism, and priesthood on priesthood. To this 
their Patriarch added the folly, not to give it a worse term, of dar- 
ing to excommunicate the legitimate sovereign of the country 
Such repeated acts of aggression at length brought on them the 
merited punishment, and the exhausted patience of the Abyssinians 
gave way to a bitter rancour, which burst forth in the destruction 
of part of the priests ; in the expulsion of the rest ; and finally, in 
the exclusion of all strangers from the country. Yet the gratitude 
still felt for the services which, as soldiers, the Portuguese had 
rendered them, induced the Abyssinians to treat all, but the priests, 
with kind and continued attention, which cannot be more strongly 
shewn, than by an extract from a letter, written by Basihdes,* 
when he expelled the fathers from the country. 
" ' Lo, our messengers have faithfully delivered to us many 
things that you said, and various reasons that you urged, when 
they declared to you our command that you should return to your 
own country. First, you say, " we did not come of our own accord, 
but were sent in consequence of repeated letters written to invite 
us." What! do you still pretend ignorance of the numerous causes, 
though so clearly laid before you in our former letter, for which 
we have obliged you to migrate to your own country? why seek 
* Ludolf's Commentaries; page 537. 
