for the reception of Novatians, Photinians, Quartodecimans and Montanists—none of whom ever seem to have gained a footing in Persia? With the purely local sect of Eustathians, whose practices were condemned at Ancyra? Or with the reconciliation of men who had lapsed under Roman conditions of persecution?
Of course adoption of such canons as were really fitted to their circumstances, coupled with a reasoned application of the excellent principles that underlay the others, would have been a very possible policy, particularly as the Assyrian Church seems never to have adopted any definite rules for dealing with "the lapsed" in her numerous persecutions; or to have attempted any control of irregular appeals to the secular power. But this was precisely what was not done. The councils were adopted bodily, and it was a question only whether the one hundred and eighty inconsistent canons thus added to the Corpus Juris of the Church would remain a mere brutum fulmen, or whether they would be the source of endless litigation and schism. Fortunately, and no thanks to the council therefor, it was the former alternative that resulted.
The council of Mar Yahb-Alaha presents an unpleasant contrast to that of Isaac. In the earlier, the canons of a much greater council were considered, and those adapted to Assyrian conditions adopted. In the later, Catholicos and bishops, having heard the advice of the ambassador who would seem to have been more saint than statesman, appear to have "opened their mouths and gulped down David whole."
The fact is that the Assyrian Church seems to have been in a frame of mind not unknown to their descendants. Suddenly realizing that things were unsatisfactory generally, they grasped at the first
