Early Christian Writings Quotes

“I was deeply impressed by his self-effacing nature; reserve in him is more effectual than any volubility in others. He is as utterly in tune with the Divine precepts as a harp with its own strings; and I call down blessings in my heart on a mind so turned towards God, for I can recognize its perfections, and the passionless serenity of a life that is lived in such heavenly mildness.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“All the ends of the earth, all the kingdoms of the world would be of no profit to me; so far as I am concerned, to die in Jesus Christ is better than to be monarch of earth’s widest bounds. He who died for us is all that I seek; He who rose again for us is my whole desire.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“Very Flesh, yet Spirit too; Uncreated, and yet born; God-and-Man in One agreed, Very-Life-in-Death indeed, Fruit of God and Mary’s seed; At once impassible and torn By pain and suffering here below: Jesus Christ, whom as our Lord we know.3”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“therefore it is clear that we must regard a bishop as the Lord Himself.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“I have had with me, and still have, an example of your affection in the person of your bishop himself, whose grave demeanour is a notable lesson in itself, and whose very gentleness is power.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“the righteous man is his own accuser.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“We have seen how former adherents of the ancient customs have since attained to a new hope; so that they have given up keeping the sabbath, and now order their lives by the Lord’s Day instead (the Day when life first dawned for us,”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“this work of ours does not consist in just making professions, but in a faith that is both practical and lasting.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“life begins and ends with two qualities. Faith is the beginning, and love is the end; and the union of the two together is God.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“You are initiates of the same mysteries10 as our saintly and renowned Paul of blessed memory (may I be found to have walked in his footsteps when I come to God!), who has remembered you in Christ Jesus in every one of his letters.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“(and trusting through your prayers to be granted an encounter with the wild beasts at Rome – a boon that will enable me to become a true disciple),”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“The Christian church originally planted by St Paul had had Timothy and the Apostle John for its bishops and was famous as a nursery of saints and martyrs.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“Ignatius was prophetic, for the second century saw the establishment of episcopal authority as the guarantee of unity and orthodoxy: it buttressed by an agreed canon of Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, the rule of faith, a creed-like summary of the Christian faith, and faithfulness to the sacraments.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“heresies or a Judaizing Docetism is open to discussion). Ignatius himself rarely quotes from the Old Testament in these epistles though his language is full of allusions to – less often quotations from – what we now call the New Testament, especially the Pauline epistles:”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“But the Docetism that was often a feature of Gnosticism has no place in Ignatius: he stresses over and again the veridical status of Jesus’s humanity and human experiences and sees in the sacraments of the Church a standing witness against Docetism (Smyrnaeans 7).”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“There does not seem to be in Ignatius any idea of apostolic succession legitimizing ecclesiastical authority such as we find in Clement; rather episcopal authority represents directly the authority of God.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“The martyr is in the front line of this conflict, an athlete anointed (cf. Ephesians 3) for struggle, whose death is a vicarious sacrifice”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“Christ belongs to the lowly of heart, and not to those who would exalt themselves over His flock. The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Sceptre of God’s Majesty, was in no pomp of pride and haughtiness – as it could so well have been – but in self-abasement,”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“They went on to give her a sign, telling her she was to hang out a scarlet cord from her house – thereby typifying the redemption which all who put their trust and hope in God shall find, through the blood of the Lord.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“Your portion will be weighed out for you in your own scales.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“When Noah preached repentance, those who gave heed to him were saved.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“Envy and jealousy have even overthrown great cities, and uprooted mighty nations.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“It was by sinful jealousy that Peter was subjected to tribulation, not once or twice but many times; it was in that way that he bore his witness, ere he left for his well-earned place in glory.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“Paul, because of jealousy and contention, has become the very type of endurance rewarded. He was in bonds seven times, he was exiled, he was stoned. He preached in the East and in the West, winning a noble reputation for his faith. He taught righteousness to all the world; and after reaching the furthest limits of the West,6 and bearing his testimony before kings and rulers, he passed out of this world and was received into the holy places. In him we have one of the greatest of all examples of endurance.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“But in so far as such a title suggests the first trickles of the pure stream of the apostolic faith which was later to flow down the properly constituted channels of an ‘apostolic succession’ preserved by the bishops, it is actually misleading. Life in the Church was never as simple as that,”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers

“Although this is often referred to as ‘heterodox Judaism’, such an appellation judges the Judaism of the Hellenistic and Roman periods by the canons of the Judaism of the Rabbis, and while it is not altogether unreasonable to do so, as it was their understanding of Judaism that was to survive into and through the period of triumphalist Christendom and reach the present day, it is an unhistorical judgement none the less.”
― Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers