HISTORY OF ABYSSINIA. 
255 
you that we should again repeat them? Recollect you not the 
late fierce disputes between you and the people of Abyssinia, nay, 
which have always existed, from the contempt in which they have 
held your rites, your ceremonies, and your religion ; and which 
have been carried to such a length, that, had not God protected 
you on high, and the favour of our emperor below, would have 
prevented your staying, I will not say twenty -two years, but even 
half a year, in the country? It is needless to describe how many 
men for this cause have been sacrificed, or how many labours and 
troubles the late emperor suffered in your cause, since all this must 
be fresh in your memory. But, in truth, the Emperor finding 
that this change of religion could by no means stand, himself, as he 
had first introduced, so he again changed it ; returning to the 
fundamental doctrines of his fathers, which is the rock of the Alex- 
andrian faith ; and this he confirmed by his public edicts, so that 
it may not again be altered from generation to generation. What 
belongs to the faithful account of those brave Portuguese, whom 
you have wished to recall to our memory, who, in defence of re- 
ligion, came into Ethiopia in the time of the Emperor Claudius, we 
perfectly know that they came for a good cause, and that in the 
very year they entered the country, peace flowed in like a river, 
and one people no longer rose against the other. For they did not 
teach the doctrine of persecution, or assemble together for the pur- 
pose of destroying the ancient religion handed down by the fathers 
and Apostles, nor did they force any one to observe other rites 
than those which were in public use, but rather fought in the de- 
fence of them, to free their country from the hands of a plunderer 
and a robber, commanding an army too truly Mahommedan. 
