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Christian researches in the Mediterraneam from MDCCCXV to MDCCCXX
Christian researches in the Mediterraneam from MDCCCXV to MDCCCXX Author:William Jowett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EGYPT, MORE ESPECIALLY IN REFERENCE TO THE (ffopttr IN the remarks which here follow on the different parts of Egypt, and which were made in the course ... more »of Two Visits to that country, the first in 1819 and the second in 1 820, the State of the Copts, as being the Dominant Christian Church, will be found most prominent. As, however, observations occur which have reference, not only to the condition of Maho- medans, but to that of Greeks, Latins, and Armenians, in Egypt ; this part of the Volume will follow a geographical order. It will be introduced by a retrospect of the History of Christianity in this country, from the period when it became oppressed by the Mahomedans, and assumed that form which it retains to the present day. PREDOMINANCE OF THE COPTIC CHURCH. In studying the History of Christianity in Egypt, after having surveyed its progress and happy effects during the earlier ages, we shall arrive at a period, which seems to have given to the Church in that country, a character maintained by it to the present day. Heresy, after many vicissitudes, sometimes predominating in the Court of Byzantium, at other times wandering in the banishment of the Oases,alternately distracting the repose of Provinces and defying the anathemas of General Councils, fixed, at length, her head-quarters in Egypt. Having survived the attacks of the last General Council, she has maintained her existence for nearly one thousand years, partly in various Churches of Syria and Mesopotamia, but principally, and in a more consistent and permanent form, in the Coptic Church. For the origin and character of the Monothelite and Monophysite Sects, the Reader is referred to various Authors below. But before we enter on the account of the present state of Egypt, it will be useful to trace, in a ...« less