IV.
(Teachers of the Easterns, etc., [356]p. 561.)
The apostle Thaddeus is called Addai in Syriac. Maris is said to have been one of the seventy disciples, but his name is not on the list ascribed to Hippolytus. He was the first bishop of the people now called "Nestorians," but whom Dr. Badger 1 prefers to call "the Christians of Assyria."
We have this liturgy in another form in Dr. Badger's important work, Nestorians and their Rituals. He selects that called "the Liturgy of Nestorius" from three which are in use among the Assyrians, but criticises the translation of Renaudot as not entirely faultless. It is selected by Dr. Badger because of its reputed Nestorianism; while Hammond gives us what is here translated, in Renaudot's Latin. 2 We must bear in mind, that, since the Ephesine Council (a.d. 431), these Christians have been separated from the communion of Eastern orthodoxy.
The Malabar Liturgy should be carefully compared with this by the student. A convenient translation of it is to be found in Neale and Littledale. A most important fact, by the way, is noted in their translation; 3 viz., that in this Malabar "the invocation of the Holy Ghost, contrary to the use of every other Oriental liturgy, preceded the words of institution;" that is to say, in the work of the Portuguese revisers, a work from which Dr. Neale and his colleague feel justified in making "a considerable alteration" as to the order of the prayers.
The words of institution are found in the Malabar, and suggest that they belong not less to this Liturgy of the Assyrians, though, ex summa verecundia, 4 they are omitted from the transcript, as the Lord's Prayer is omitted in the Clementine.
The normal form of this corrupted liturgy is credited with extreme antiquity by Dr. Neale. To his learned and cogent reasoning on the subject the student should by all means refer. 5
