NOTE: — 22 —

DISCOURSE III.

What do these deluded, wretched [men] intend to make known by writing thus: “Our orthodox religion differs in this from that of the Ēǰmiatsnakan Armenians”? Now, the true-born and unerring sons of the Mother See of Holy Ēǰmiatsin and of our holy father Grigor Lusaworič‘, that most beneficent Patriarch, ask: what novel-sounding voice may this be—[one] of religious knowledge, or of irreligion? If the matter indeed pertains to religious knowledge, which the words of the Holy Divine Scriptures and the theological doctors of truth preach and teach us, surely it was not necessary so boldly to suppose some difference within our holy Christian religion. Therefore we orthodox Armenians, faithful sons of the Mother See of Holy Ēǰmiatsin, are compelled, first, to answer their prattlings and babblings with the word of the holy Apostle Paul: “If then I do not know the meaning of the voice, I shall be a barbarian to the one who speaks to me, and he who speaks to me a barbarian” (1 Cor. 14:11). Second, by dispersing the enterprise of their troubled minds and hearts, we turn the contrary extremity of that enterprise unto their own reproof; for that proposition is alien and most distant from the Divine words of the holy Scriptures, and from the ordinance of the Apostles and the apostolic holy Patriarchs, and moreover from the exact requirement of the holy Christian religion. Then let the word of the holy Apostle Paul be turned upon them: “Desiring to be teachers of the law, they understand neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm” (1 Tim. 1:7). Let us therefore examine here what the religion of Christians is, and what its definition [is]. The blessed Apostle Paul calls it a “new creature” in the second epistle to the church of the Corinthians: “Therefore if any [man] be in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). That is to say: through this Christian religion, by the gracious law of Jesus, our spirit was renewed unto a renewal of eternal righteousness...