ABSTRACT
WE have now finished the history of the Churches of Eastern Christendom: Orthodox, Heretical and Uniate. Omitting the last, they fall into two groups: twelve in communion with each other, and, except Bulgaria, with the <Ecumenical Patriarchate: 1 and six others, Nestorian or Monophysite, separate from it.2 Except in so far as N estorians and Monophysites retain their distinctive tenets about the relation of " Person" and" Nature" in Jesus Christ, the Eastern Churches, as a whole, retain all those marks of the Faith, Order and Worship of the Church as it was at the opening of the fifth century whiCh justify their claim to rank with historic Christendom. They are held by the Roman Church to be all alike in schism; but that Church acknowledges their Orders and Sacraments to be valid: while their Creed, except for Western3 and Roman4 additions to it, is the same. Their liturgies, moreover, are rites belonging to ancient families of liturgies of which the Roman rite is one. The Eastern Churches, however, do not constitute one body: for Orthodox and Heretical, N estorian and Monophysite, maintain an existence separate from each other.
