“Patriarch Matteos had already begun religious controversies with the Protestant missionaries, these same controversies were travails of a new eruption. Those inclined to Protestantism were about to appear and the anathematizing course taken by Matteos very materially aided the purpose of the Protestant missionaries, because to persecute is to spread. And, behold, thus on the one hand the inconsiderateness of those inclined to Protestantism, and on the other hand the imprudent conduct of Patriarch Matteos, caused a number of our people to depart from the maternal bosom of the church and adhere to Protestantism, which forms a distinct body, choosing for itself a separate civil head.”[88]
The persecutions and the consequent sufferings of the people were severe, unnecessary, and unjustifiable. Yet whether there were sufficient reasons for a separate organizations it is difficult to say. The missionaries, however, yielding to the desire of those who wished to form a separate organization, gathered them together, forty in number, and constituted July 1st, 1846, the first Evangelical Armenian Church of Constantinople. On the following Sabbath Mr. Apisoghom Khachadurian was ordained by the missionaries and installed the pastor of this new church.
On the 20th of July, 1846, another church was organized at Nicomedia and during that summer two more churches were organized, one at Ada-Bazar and the other at Trebizond. These organizations were followed by others in different parts of the country.
The Protestant Armenians, thus organized into separate churches, formed a new community, yet were under the jurisdiction of the patriarch and up to 1847 not quite free from molestation and privation. “In the temporary absence of Sir Stratford Canning, Lord Cawley negotiated the matter with the government, and on the 15th of November, 1847, the grand vizier issued a paper declaring that the ‘Christian subjects of the Ottoman Government professing Protestantism would constitute a separate community, with all the rights and privileges permitted in their temporal or spiritual concern on the part of the patriarch, monks, or priests of other sects.’”. In November, 1850, a decree was issued proclaiming the professors of all religions equal in the eye of the law. The Protestants then were organized as a distinct civil community, having equal religious rights with the older Christian bodies.
Up to this time the work of reformation spread and progressed with wonderful rapidity, though through persecutions and privations. The readiness of those who knew the truth to spread it; the eagerness of the people to receive the truth; the unconsciously employed means of those who tried to stop this movement, by trying so to do thus spreading it, are well condensed in the following paragraphs:
“When the patriarch had hurried Bedros, the Vartabed, out of the city for his Protestant tendencies, and Vartabed had gone distributing books and preaching throughout the whole region of Aleppo and Aintab. When he had sent priest Vartanes a prisoner to the monastery of Marash, and then banished him to Cæsarea, Vartanes had first awakened the monks, and then preached the gospel all the way to Cæsarea.
“The missionaries wisely availed themselves of this rising interest in tours for preaching, conversing, and distributing religious treatises. Messrs. Powers, Johnson, Van Lennex, Smith, Peabody, Schneider, Goodell, Everett, and Benjamin, pushed forth to Tintab, Aleppo, Brousa, Harpoot, Sivas, Diarbekir, Cæsarea, and various other places through the empire.
“They soon found that they were in the midst of one of the most extraordinary religious movements of modern times, silent, and sometimes untraceable, but potent and pervasive. In every important town of the empire where there were Armenians, there were found to be as early as 1849, one or more lovers of evangelical truth. But it was no causeless movement. The quiet working of the ‘little leaven’ was traceable almost from its source by indubitable signs. It was a notable sight to see when, in 1838, the Vartabed and the leading men of Orta Keuy, on the Bosphorus, where the missionaries first gained access to the Armenians, went and removed the pictures from the village church. It was another landmark when, in 1842, the fervor of the converts not only filled the city with rumors of the new doctrines, but, after a season of special prayer, held in a neighboring valley, sent forth priest Vartanes on a missionary tour into the heart of Asia Minor. A still more significant fact was when, in that year and the next, the Armenian women were effectually reached and roused, till family worship began in many a household, and a female seminary at Pera became (in 1845) a necessity. The brethren had observed the constant increase of the inquiries, often from a distance, and they had found, even in 1843, such a demand for their books as the press at Smyrna was unable to supply. In many places and at Nicomedia, Adabar and Aintab, books and tracts began the work.
“The preaching services at Constantinople would be occasionally attended by individuals from four or five other towns. At Erzroom one Sabbath (February, 1846), there were attendants from six different places. The seminary for young men at Bebek (a suburb of Constantinople) drew visitors from great distances and from all quarters, as far as Alexandria, St. Petersburg, and the Euphrates. The native brethren also had been engaged in disseminating the truth, and the first awakenings at Killis, Kessab, and Eodosta, for example, were due to their labors.
“From this time forth the enterprise became too broad even to trace in this rapid way. If the whole movement shall ever be suitably recorded the history of this reformation will be second in interest to no other than has ever been written. There are scores and scores of villages, each of which would furnish material for a volume, and multitudes of cases that recall the fervor, faith, and fortitude of apostolic times.”[89]