"The slightest acquaintance with ecclesiastical history may convince one, that before the commencement of the fourth century, Christianity had extensively degenerated from its original purity as a religion of the heart, into a mere profession of theoretical dogmas, and the observance of external rites. Such, it is natural to suspect, was the form of it to which the Armenians were at that period converted; and the circumstances of the event, if national tradition has correctly preserved them, confirm the suspicion, that they have from the beginning known extremely little of true conversion. We are told that immediately upon King Durtad's embracing the faith, the nation followed his example in a body, and were baptized. To say nothing of the doubtfulness of all national conversions, the very hastiness of this proceeding, by allowing no time for competent instruction, shows that the Armenians could not have been enlightened converts; the fact that the Scriptures were not translated into their language until a century afterward, is an additional indication of the scantiness of their religious knowledge; and the confessed backsliding of many of the nobility into the most scandalous immoralities and the blackest crimes, even during the lifetime of Durtad, proves how superficial was their conversion. "Thus the Armenian Church was a soil well adapted to the rapid growth of all the corruptions, which from that time sprang up, in such speedy succession, in different parts of the Christian world. Even those which then existed were, it would seem, not sparingly introduced by St. Gregory. For, by the immediate consecration of four hundred bishops, and a countless number of priests, he betrayed a disposition to multiply an idle and unqualified priesthood; and by the construction of convents and nunneries, and spending the last of his days in a solitary cave, he showed that he was ready to foster the monastic spirit of his age. So deeply, indeed, was the taste for monkhood implanted, that his fifth successor is said to have built two thousand convents.