and a feeling in favour of it is in the air, the standing obstacle in the way is apt to be the hierarchy. It is not often that sheer force of lofty character can prevail and win high office in the Church under a Government that does not care for loftiness of character, and dreads strong men anywhere.
At first, no doubt, the fact that the secular Government was ready to support the head of the melet made for strong discipline in the Church. But melets tend to multiply; a Government that distrusts its Christian subjects is always ready to encourage them to divide, and will readily recognize a new division among them; while their ingrained quarrelsomeness always leads them to take advantage of this. Under such circumstances discipline can hardly be pressed. A bishop may threaten a rich evil-doer with excommunication; but will be met by the threat, "If you dare, I register myself as Jacobite or Romanist. They will receive me readily enough, and it will be bad for any man in my village who does not follow me."
The melet system guarantees the existence of, and gives some freedom to, the Church of a subject population; but it also puts a premium on that spirit of quarrel and intrigue which is the bane of Eastern Christianity.
The canons passed by the council numbered twenty-one; and are in effect an adaptation of certain Nicene rules to the circumstances of the Church, together with other rules of their own devising for its organization. It is a strong proof of the spirit of independence in the Assyrians that at this moment—when they owed so much to the West—they should have dealt thus boldly with the canons even of Nicæa. The creed, of course, they accepted; but all other rules they seem to have felt themselves free to accept, alter or neglect,
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