1836.] Memoir of St. Nierses Clajensis. 149 



pavtook of our nature. He is proclaimed by the preachers of the gospel to be 

 perfect God and man, uniting in his person divinity and humanity in a manner 

 far surpassing the union of the soul and body ; for the former, being commended 

 into the hands of the Father, was separated from the latter, but the divinity con- 

 tinued inseparable from both of them*." 



The preceding creed is immediately followed by a detailed account 

 of the forms and ceremonies observed in the Armenian Church, similar 

 to that which the writer had previously drawn out at the particular 

 request of Alexius. It is concluded by the following short para- 

 graph : 



" In the perusal of our letter, wherein the creed and the observances of our 

 Church are explained in a comprehensive style, we humbly hope that your 

 Gracious and Imperial Majesty will not deny us the candour and sincerity with 

 which our sentiments are embodied in writing. Let us not be suspected of 

 parasitical subterfuges in the communication of our thoughts, and let it be 

 remembered that we have stated in this nothing which is at variance with simple 

 truth, and the genuine effusions of our hearts." 



The motives of the writer in making this assertion were to silence 

 the mouths of such miscreants of his nation, as had gone over to the 

 Church of Greece, and were invidiously endeavouring to baffle the 

 consummation of the proposed union, by rendering the doctrines and 

 ceremonies of the Armenian Church censurable in the eyes of the 

 Emperor and Patriarch of Constantinople. 



On the return of the embassy to the Court of Greece, the letter of 

 Niersis was put into the hands of the emperor Manuel, who per- 

 sonally presented it to the patriarch. A translation of it being read 

 before a numerous assembly of the dignitaries of the Greek Church, 

 they were struck with admiration at the irresistible arguments which 

 it comprised. They were stimulated by its contents to the abandon- 

 ment of the inveterate hatred which they bore towards the Armenians, 

 and unanimously agreed in effecting the contemplated union between 

 the two Churches. The emperor, excited by an intense desire of pro- 

 moting this sacred cause, proposed to pay a visit to Armenia, accom- 

 panied by some of the learned theologists of Greece, with a view of 

 meeting Nierses the Graceful, and holding with him a conference on 

 the religious differences that existed between the two nations ; but he 

 was unfortunately prevented from the fulfilment of his intention by the 



* This clear, lucid and unequivocal confession of faith is enough to carry convic- 

 tion to the minds of the most fastidious of our accusers, that the Church of Arme- 

 nia is totally free from the heresies of Eutvches ! Let it also satisfy such 

 misinformed, misled, and misguided, writers as Mr. Charles Mac Farlane, 

 author of the sublimeTale of Constantinople, entitled "The Armenians," that 

 we Armenians are not Eutychians, as he is led to believe from the misrepresentations 

 of the Romanists. 



