NOTE: — 65 —

And Nersēs Shnorhali, our holy Patriarch, setteth forth before us this very same orthodox confession, teaching thus: “The Father unoriginate and unbegotten; the Son begotten of the Father’s nature, yet without time; likewise also the Holy Spirit is said [to be] a procession from the Father, and co-glorified with the Son: God perfect, even as the Father and the Son; one will of the three Persons, and one power, and one creative agency.” All this orthodox confession of our Holy Apostolic Church is exactly conformable to the exposition of these Gospel truths: “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30); “There are three that bear record in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” (1 John Catholic, 5:7). Hast thou not indeed taken to mind, true-born and unerring son of the Mother of light, Holy Catholic Ējmiatsin, and seen by what deceitful words they have dared—by truncating and abridging the entire text of the sound doctrinal words of our Proto-Patriarch, Saint Gregory the Illuminator, and by perverting the sense of his perfect and upright confession—audaciously to establish through a certain falsification the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, writing thus: “We accept the procession of the Holy Spirit according to the confession of the Illuminator, whereof he saith: ‘The Father of Himself, the Son from the Father, the Holy Spirit from them and in them’”? O the cunning of these [men]! Whereby, having cast aside the words explanatory of the true meaning of these phrases “from them” and “in them”—which are: “in essence, in nature, in Godhead, in equal measure”—they reach out toward various [false] opinions, transforming the words of confession concerning the co-glorification of the Holy Spirit with the Father and with the Son into relations of the Divine procession; not knowing that the will of the Illuminator of our souls was to manifest the consubstantial unity and unsearchable co-glorification of the Holy Spirit with the Father and with the Son. Now, if they be willing to cast aside these fictitious and novel doctrines, and follow with single-hearted mind the orthodox teaching of our holy Father Gregory the Illuminator, and be named his sincere and true-born sons, let them learn from his explicit and sound doctrine which he teacheth concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit according to the tradition of the Holy Scriptures: “Behold the Father perfect, and the Son true, and the Spirit certain. He signified also the undivided and…”

NOTE: 9