Metropolitan of Bait Lapat,[1] then rose and made a speech of some length. This is a valuable historical document from which we have drawn freely in the previous chapters. He acknowledged in the fullest way Assyrian indebtedness to "westerns" in the past, snowing how repeatedly their intervention had saved "easterns" from the consequences of their own acts, and how invaluable their influence with the Government had been. Then, in apparent contradiction with the lessons of this recent history, it was proposed by Hosea, Bishop of Nisibis, and carried by acclamation, that Dad-Ishu should be begged to resume his throne as Patriarch (the title is now used for the first time); that in future absolute obedience must be rendered to him, and, in particular, that no appeal should be made from his decrees to "western patriarchs."[2] If there were cause for complaint against him, neither suffragans nor foreigners might presume to judge him; that office being the right of Christ alone, who placed him at the head of the Church. Dad-Ishu yielded to the prayer of the council, and resumed his throne, and this decision was solemnly placed on record.
The act of the council, as will be seen, was twofold. It declared the "Church of the East" to be absolutely independent, and it did as much as a council could do to set up an oriental papacy over itself, in the person of him whom we may now call its patriarch.
Of these two, the first was probably the important point in the eyes of contemporaries, and the second necessary to guard it. Westernization spelt persecution and must be stopped, and the readiest way to stop it was to proclaim independence, and no longer to invite western bishops to concern themselves in eastern affairs.
