“ The Armenian fathers held that Jesus, unlike other men, possessed incorruptible flesh, made of ethereal fire, and so far they shared the main heresy of the Paulicians. In many of their homilies Christ’s baptism is also regarded as his regeneration by water and spirit, and this view almost transcends the modest adoptionism of the Thonraki as revealed in the Key of Truth. ”

“ In modern Russia also survives a sect of Bogomils called Christowschtschina, [6] because one member of it is adored by the rest as Christ. It was because they believed themselves to have living christs among them that the Paulicians rejected the fetish worship of a material cross, in which orthodox Armenian priests imagined they had by prayers and anointing confined the Spirit of Christ. It is also likely enough that they did not consider sensible matter to be a vehicle worthy to contain divine effluence and holy virtues, and knew that such rites were alien to early Christianity. ”

“ Jesus was a new Adam and a fresh beginning, in so far as he was made flesh in and not of his mother, to whom, as both Esc. and the Key insist, Jesus particularly denied blessedness and honour (Mark iii. 31-35) , limiting true kinship with himself to those who shall do the will of God. The account of Christ’s flesh is torn out of the Key, but it is affirmed that it was at the baptism that “he put on that primal raiment of light which Adam lost in the garden.” And this view we also meet with in Armenian fathers accounted orthodox. ”

“ For this reason the Thonraki adhere to adult baptism, which in ancient wise they confer at thirty years of age or later, and have retained in its primitive significance the rite of giving a Christian name to a child on the eighth day from birth. It is hardly likely that the Thonraki of the 10th century would have rejected water-baptism and yet have retained unction with holy oil; this Gregory Magistros attests they did, but he is an unreliable witness. ”

“ Christ did not lay hands on patriarchs and metropolitans and bishops and presbyters and deacons and monks, nor ordain their several prayers. Let them therefore not be ordained nor blessed with these prayers. (15) Christ did not enjoin the building of churches and the furnishing of holy tables, and their anointing with myrrh and hallowing with a myriad of prayers. Let them not do it either. (16) Christ did not fast on the fourth day of the week and on the Paraskevê. Let them not fast either. (17) Christ did not bid us pray towards the east. Neither shall they pray towards the east. ”

“ The title “elect one,” used by the Armenian Paulicians also has a Manichean ring. It may be that under stress of common persecution there was a certain fusion in Armenia of Pauliani and Manicheans. The writings and tenets of Mani were widely diffused there. Such a fusion is probably reflected in the Key of Truth. ”

“ After 1200 we can find no notice of them in Armenian writers until the 18th century, when they reappear in their old haunts. In 1828 a colony of them settled in Russian Armenia, bringing with them a book called the Key of Truth, which contains their rites of name-giving, baptism and election, compiled from old MSS., [3] we know not when. ”

“ Similarly (in a 10th-century form of renunciation of Bogomil error preserved in a Vienna codex [5] ) we hear of Peter "the founder of the heresy of the Messalians or Lycopetrians or Fundaitae and Bogomils who called himself Christ and promised to rise again after death." Of this Peter, Tychichus (? Sergius) is reported in the same document to have been fellow initiate and disciple. ”