Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/79

Rh creed that was arranged as a protest and defense against the erroneous teaching of Arius was at once adopted by the Armenian church and used in her worships until this day. Saint Gregore, the Illuminator, added to it some sentences in order to emphasize its general spirit.

The Council of Chalcedon, 451 A. D., the Armenian bishops could not attend on account of the Persian persecutions, and not being contented with the resolution of that Council in regard to the number of the natures of our Saviour, refused its decrees in 536. Accepting the Mono-physical Doctrine (that is, in our Lord's person the divine and the human united to one unseparable nature), she proclaimed herself independent of the Greek church, and since then had no formal union with her, although she regards her as a "sister church." This separation, in spite of its political disadvantages, has proved beneficial for the maintainance of the purity of the doctrines and the practice of the Armenian church.

The seven sacraments of the early church, as mass, confession, absolution, unction, matrimony, baptism and eucharist, though practiced in the Armenian church, are rather formal than doctrinal, as is proved by her susceptibility to internal reformation. The following hymn, composed by Nerses the Graceful, the Armenian Archbishop who lived in the twelfth century (about 400 years before the Reformation of Martin Luther), and sung in the Armenian church until this day, is one among many that shows the doctrine and spirit of that ancient church: