in church-history, the name given to the Syriac, Egyptian, and other Christians of the Levant. The Melchites, excepting some few points of little or no importance, which relate only to ceremonies and ecclesiastical discipline, are in every respect professed professed Greeks; but they are governed by a particular patriarch, who resides at Damas, and assumes the title of patriarch of Antioch.

MELCHISÉDECHIANS, in church-history, a sect which arose about the beginning of the third century, and affirmed, that Melchisedek was not a man, but a heavenly power, superior to Jesus Christ: for Melchisedek, they said, was the intercessor and mediator of the angels; but Jesus Christ was so only for men, and his priesthood only a copy of that of Melchisedek.