The silent influence of this reformation spread far and wide in the city of Constantinople and its suburbs. The Roman Church, through its Jesuit missionaries, had carried on the work of proselyting the Armenians for centuries, and she had thousands of adherents. As a Church she had had her experience with the Reformation in the West. She was alarmed and made the first attempt to stop its progress in the East. The patriarch of the Roman Catholic Armenians publicly denounced the missionaries and their books in 1836. His evil example was followed four years later by the Greek and Armenian patriarchs of Constantinople. Thus the spirit of hatred and persecution was instilled by their respective representatives into the minds and hearts of different communities. But this movement being mostly among the Armenians, their patriarch took a more active part in issuing anathemas and sending them to the provinces, and he caused them to be read in all the churches. The Armenian Church was sorely wounded by the Roman Church and its missionaries. The national church meant and still means to the Armenians a national unity, and a separation from the Church was considered a division in the nation. Ever since the Armenians lost their independence, they were known as a religious community in the Turkish empire and their patriarch as the representative of the whole people. The patriarch, as the head of the nation, and other leaders, therefore, thought the suppression of this evangelical work might be a prevention of such a division as had taken place in the case of the followers of the Roman missionaries in 1830. The patriarch and his advisers, who took violent measures of persecution against those who favored and labored for the reformation of the Church, unhappily were not aware of the fact that the intentions of the missionaries of the American Board, were very different from those of the missionaries of the Roman Church. The following is the statement written at the time by Rev. Dr. Goodell: “We ourselves, at this place, have nothing to do with the Church, its dogma, ceremonies, and superstitions.... Nor do we make any attempt to establish a new Church, to raise a new party. We disclaim everything of the kind. We tell them frankly, you have sects enough among you already, and we have no design of setting up a new one, or of pulling down your churches, or drawing members from them in order to build ours over.”[86] And we find this policy adhered to in the case of the brethren in Nicomedia. The bishop, priests, and the leading men of that city formed a council, and this council drew up a new confession of faith.