NOTE: — 23 —

...[with a heav]enly and immortal life. For the mystery of the Incarnation of Jesus, our Life-giver, is preached by the Apostles as a new creation, according to that [scripture]: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature" (Gal. 6:15). Inasmuch as the creation of the graces of Christ is newly wondrous and incomparable, [it is] the power of the immortality of a new spiritual life in the solemnity of our holy Christian religion, as Saint Ep‘rem says (Volume III). Therefore, marvelous is this grace of the new law of Jesus, of the new, holy, and true religion, a predestined new creation. To remain steadfast in this gracious religion of the new law, the blessed Apostle Paul preaches unto the church of the Colossians: "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col. 3:9–10). Therefore, Saint John Chrysostom [Yovhan Oskiberan] rightly defines our religion of the Christ-bestowed law of grace (in [his] *Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians*): "The Christian religion is a passing from sin unto righteousness, from the old law unto the new." The baptism therein is a certain kind of resurrection; the graces, and the gifts, and the promises of things to come, the commandments, and all the revelations are new and more glorious than the former ones. Being, therefore, a new divine creation, whosoever hath embraced the same hath become a new creation of God. See thou how our angelic *vardapet* of Narek praises the power of our religion, saying: "A religion exalted and unyielding" (Narek, ch. 71). This same unyielding loftiness and invincible power of our religion is proven in the divinely wise words of Saint Cyril, Patriarch of Jerusalem [Kiwrēġ Erusaġēmay Hayrapet] (in the *Epistle to the Emperor Constantius*): "For it hath been granted by deed and experience that the most pious religion of the Christians is established not by the persuasiveness of wise words, but by the manifestation and power of the Spirit; it is not merely recounted by men, but also testified from heaven by God." If religion is the truth of the Christian faith, then it hath neither diversity nor mutability: "One Lord, one faith," etc. (Eph. 4:5). Unto this same meaning, Sargis Shnorhali writes in concise words and wisdom...