NOTE: - 47 -

It is said: “The Apostles ordained and established firmly that there shall be the feast of the Nativity and Theophany of our Savior... which is the sixth day of the month of January according to the reckoning of the Greeks, and they shall assemble [to celebrate] it greatly with jubilation and joy.” And Saint Pōghikarpos [Polycarp], disciple of the holy Evangelist Yovhannēs [John], after having written of various Apostolic traditions, writeth further: “Lo, this we say: not that the feasts of the Nativity and the Baptism are separate and distinct, but that it is proper to celebrate [them] on one [and the same] day, although these acts which were accomplished this day are distinct.” Therefore, in accordance with this, the words of those calumniators are deviated and perverted from the true traditions of the holy Apostles. Wherefore, let them be ashamed, and let them be judged utterly guilty of disgrace before the unerring followers of the holy Apostles and the sound-minded guardians of the traditions of the divinely-inspired holy Fathers. Let them read and learn from Grigor the Theologian [Gregory of Nazianzus], who writeth thus: “Let the bishop ordain for his church the day of the Nativity and the Baptism on the sixth of January, and on the fourteenth of February the Presentation into the Temple. But the mystery of the ill-reputed, perverted innovation of others we do not receive, of whom Yovhannēs saith: ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us’; for they dared to declare apparent the true and unsearchable birth of the Only-Begotten. And others, wishing to alter the Apostolic seal of the Nativity, and others that of the Theophany, remained unbelieving of the canonical definitions handed down by the Apostles, which the Church holdeth transmitted in writing, that the day of the Nativity and Theophany of our Savior shall be celebrated together on the sixth of the month of January” (in [his] *Canonical Discourses*). And the blessed Makarios, Patriarch of Erusaghēm [Jerusalem], writeth (in his *Canonical Discourses*) thus: “For the mystery of Baptism, our Fathers yearned most especially on three feasts: at the Pascha, at the Pentecost, [and] at the Nativity and Baptism, which we celebrate on one [and the same] day.” Likewise, Bishop Melitos [Meletius], who was one of the illustrious Fathers of the Council of Kostandnupolits [Constantinople], writeth thus: “We celebrate, according to the tidings of the angel, the nine-month Nativity, the eight-day Circumcision, [and] the thirty-year Baptism. And honoring [them] thus, we celebrate the Nativity and the Baptism on one [and the same] day” (in the *Epistle to Ewtropios* [Eutropius]). If, then, they are truly Lusaworch‘akan [Illuminatorian/Gregorian] Armenians according to their own subscription, let them turn right back on their heels from...