ARMENIANS

The Christians of Armenia, the first country in which Christianity was recognised as the national religion, in consequence of the preaching of Gregory, called The Illuminator , in the beginning of the fourth century. At a later time the Armenians adopted the Eutychian or Monophysite heresy, a erting that the human nature of Christ is swallowed up of the Divine; or is no more properly human than a drop of vinegar put into the sea can afterwards be reckoned vinegar. They do not deny the real presence in the eucharist, they do not mix water with their wine, nor do they consecrate unleavened bread. They abstain from eating blood and things strangled. They scrupulously observe fasting; and fasts so frequently occur, that their whole religion seems to consist in fasting. They admit infants to the sacrament of the eucharist: they reject purgatory and prayers for the dead: they fast on Christmas day, and they allow marriage in their priests. The Armenians were anciently subject to the patriarchs of Constantinople, but they now have their own patriarchs.