Ebook The Church of Armenia

The task of writing an Introduction to Mr. Gregory's translation of Mgr. Ormanian's book upon the Church of Armenia is not free from difficulty; nor is it made the less difficult because the Bishop who should have written it, had his life been spared, was a man of such wide and various learning as the late Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Wordsworth. Yet in that Church there is much that is interesting to all Christians, and perhaps especially to members of the Church of England. For the history of the Church of Armenia is a witness to certain great principles of ecclesiastical life. It is a protest against the assumed infallibility and universality of the Church of Rome. For the Church of Armenia believes that "no Church, however great in herself, represents the whole of Christendom; that each one, taken singly, can be mistaken, and to the Universal Church alone belongs the privilege of infallibility in her dogmatic decisions." She takes her stand then upon the national character and prerogative of Churches.