NOTE: - 29 -

...[of Cæsarea] writeth thus: "Now then, Satan found this last [heresy], more bitter even than all [the others], the wild beast of the Eutychians, whereby he brought all the churches of the entire world into mourning and sorrow; having found the wretched man Eutik‘ēs [to be] an ambush for his iniquity, through him he renewed again the heresy of Valentinus, which had been suppressed for a long time" (*On Fables*, Book III, end of the volume). Did not our Holy Fathers utterly refute and reject the error of Eutik‘ēs, even as our Patriarch, Saint Nersēs Shnorhali, in his metrical discourse on the Incarnation of the Son of God [writeth]: "The Word, bodiless by essence, Became flesh in truth; Preserving His own [nature] unalterably, And truly taking mine. This new, wondrous commingling: God and man are united in nature; The essences are not changed, Nor [merely] formed in outward semblance; As the foul Eutik‘ēs said, That He took not flesh in reality, But passed through the Virgin in appearance [only], Like through a pipe." Assuredly, they err doubly in writing thus: "We confess the holy Council of K‘aghkedon to be in agreement with the three previously assembled holy Councils, that is to say, of Nikiya, of Ep‘esos, and of Kostandnupolits‘." First, they have erred in this statement, that [it is] "in agreement with the three Councils"; for in these four Councils, the matters of the diverse, grievous errors of four pestilent heresiarchs were brought to judgment, as we demonstrated above. Then the Holy Fathers assembled therein, according to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, refuted the wicked schisms of their errors and reproved each of them with the orthodox confession; whereby each of the heresiarchs received the spiritual punishment of anathemas and excommunications, and, as useless members of the Holy Church of Christ, were justly condemned, severed, and cast out therefrom. Then the ancient Councils of the Holy Fathers, whether ecumenical and...