Letters of Ignatius (Long Recension)

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the church blessed in the greatness of God the Father and in fullness, [predestined] also for abiding, unchangeable glory, united … by [the will] of God the Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour; to the church worthy of all blessedness, which is in Ephesus of Asia: abundant greeting in Jesus Christ and in blameless joy.

I have received in God your much-loved name, which you possess by a righteous nature, according to faith and love in Christ Jesus our Saviour. Being imitators … by the blood of Christ, you have perfectly accomplished the work that is natural to you. For when you heard that I was coming bound from Syria for the sake of Christ, our common hope, trusting through your prayer to succeed in fighting with beasts at Rome, … of him who offered himself for us to God as an offering and sacrifice, I received your whole multitude … in Onesimus, a man of love beyond words, and your bishop, whom I pray you to love according to Christ Jesus, and that you all may be in his likeness. For blessed is God, who has granted you, being such as you are, to possess such a bishop in Christ.

As to my fellow servant Burrhus, your deacon in the things of God and blessed in all things, I pray that he may remain blameless, to the honour of the church and of your most blessed bishop. And Crocus also, worthy of God and of you, whom we received as a pattern of your love, has refreshed me in all things, and was not ashamed of my chain; may the Father of Jesus Christ likewise refresh him, … and Fronto, through whom I saw you all in love. May I have joy of you always, if indeed I am worthy. It is fitting, then, for you in every way to glorify Jesus Christ who has glorified you, so that, being perfected in one subjection, in the same mind and the same judgment, and all speaking the same thing about the same thing, being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, you may be sanctified in all things.

I do not give you orders as if I were someone. For even though I am bound for his name, I am not yet perfected in Jesus Christ. For now I am only beginning to be a disciple, and I speak to you as to fellow servants. For I ought to have been reminded by you in faith, admonition, endurance and long-suffering. But since love does not allow me to be silent concerning you, I have therefore taken the lead in exhorting you to run in harmony with the mind of God. For Jesus Christ also does all things according to the mind of the Father, as he himself says somewhere: “I always do the things that please him.” Therefore we too must live according to the mind of God in Christ, and imitate him as Paul did: “Be imitators of me,” he says, “as I also am of Christ.” [4] Hence it is fitting for you too to run in harmony with the mind of the bishop, who shepherds you according to God; which indeed you do yourselves, being taught by the Spirit. … to the commandments of the Lord and to his ordinances, as strings … being worthy of God, it is so attuned to the bishop as strings to a lyre, bound together thus in concord and harmonious love, of which Jesus Christ is the leader and guardian. And you, each one of you, become one choir, so that, being harmonious in concord and taking up the melody of God in unity, you may become one in harmony with God the Father and his beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. For he says: “Grant to them, holy Father, that as I and you are one, they too may be one in us.” It is profitable for you, then, joined to God in blameless unity, to be imitators of Christ, of whom you are also members.

For if I in a short time had such intimacy with your bishop, not human but spiritual, how much more do I count you blessed, who are bound to him as the church is to the Lord Jesus, and the Lord to God his Father, so that all things may be harmonious in unity? Let no one be deceived: unless someone is within the altar, he lacks the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two has such power that Christ stands among them, how much more will the prayer of the bishop and of the whole church, sending up together … all requests in Christ? Whoever, then, separates himself from such, and does not come together in the council of sacrifices and the church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, is a wolf in sheep's clothing, displaying a gentle form. Be eager, beloved, to be subject to the bishop and the presbyters and the deacons. For he who is subject to these obeys Christ, who appointed them; but he who disobeys them disobeys Christ Jesus. “And he who disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.” For he who does not obey his superiors is self-willed, quarrelsome and proud. … “but gives grace to the humble.” And: “The proud transgressed exceedingly.” And the Lord says to the priests: “He who hears you hears me, and he who hears me hears the Father who sent me; he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” [6] The more, then, you see the bishop silent, the more you should fear him. For everyone whom the master of the house sends to his own stewardship, we must receive as the one who sent him. Clearly, therefore, we must look upon the bishop as the Lord himself, standing before the Lord. … a man … and not to stand before sluggish men. Onesimus himself greatly praises your good order in God, that you all live according to truth, and that no heresy dwells among you; indeed you do not listen to anyone except Jesus Christ, the true shepherd and teacher. And you are, as Paul wrote to you, one body and one spirit, because you have also been called in one hope of faith. Since there is also “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” You, then, are such, [taught] by such men … and Timothy the most faithful.

Some most worthless people are in the habit of carrying the Name about with wicked guile, while doing things unworthy of God and holding views contrary to the teaching of Christ, to their own destruction and that of those who believe them. These you must shun as wild beasts. For “the righteous man who shuns them is saved for ever, but the destruction of the ungodly is sudden and a cause of rejoicing.” For they are “dumb dogs,” against whom one must be on guard, for they suffer from an incurable disease. But our physician is the only true God, the unbegotten and unapproachable, the Lord of all, and the Father and begetter of the Only-begotten. We have as physician also our Lord God Jesus the Christ, the only-begotten Son and Word before the ages, but afterwards also man, of Mary the virgin. For “the Word became flesh”: the bodiless in a body, the impassible in a passible body, the immortal in a mortal body, life in corruption, so that he might free our souls from death and corruption and heal them, and cure them when they were sick with ungodliness and evil desires.

Let no one, then, deceive you, as indeed you are not deceived; for you belong wholly to God. For when no desire exists among you that is able to torment you and bring punishment on you, then you live according to God and you are Christ's. I am your offscouring, and that of the most holy church of the Ephesians … Those who are carnal cannot do spiritual things, nor those who are spiritual carnal things; just as faith cannot do the things of unbelief, nor unbelief the things of faith. But you, being full of the Holy Spirit, do nothing carnal, but all things spiritually. You are being perfected in Christ Jesus, who is the Saviour of all people, especially of believers. [9] But I have learned that certain people have passed through your city, bringing an evil teaching of a strange and wicked spirit; but you did not allow them to sow their tares among you, stopping your ears so as not to receive the error they proclaim, being persuaded that the spirit that leads the people astray does not speak the things of Christ but its own, for it is a liar. But the Holy Spirit [does not speak] his own things but those of Christ, and not from himself but from the Lord; just as the Lord also announced to us the things he received from the Father. For “the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.” And concerning the Holy Spirit: “He will not speak,” he says, “from himself, but whatever he hears from me.” And concerning himself he says to the Father: “I glorified you,” he says, “on the earth; I have finished the work which you gave me; I have made your name known to men.” And concerning the Holy Spirit: “He will glorify me, for he will take from what is mine.” But the spirit of error proclaims itself and speaks its own things, for it is self-pleasing; it glorifies itself, for it is full of conceit; it is a liar, a deceiver, … fearful of every noise. From its working Jesus Christ will deliver you, he who founded you upon the rock as chosen stones, fitted together into the divine building of the Father, raised up to the heights through Christ who was crucified for us, using the Holy Spirit as a rope, borne upward by faith, and lifted by love from earth to heaven. … “Blessed,” he says, “are the blameless in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.” And the way that does not lead astray is Jesus the Christ: “For I,” he says, “am the way and the life.” And the way leads to the Father: “For no one,” he says, “comes to the Father except through me.” Blessed, then, are you who are God-bearers, Spirit-bearers, … adorned with the commandments of Jesus Christ, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession”; because of whom I rejoice and have been counted worthy, through what I write, to converse with the saints who are in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. I rejoice, then, over you, because you give no heed to vanity and love nothing according to the flesh, but according to God. … [10] … pray; for there is hope of repentance for them, that they may attain to God. “Shall not he who falls rise again? Or shall not he who turns away return?” Let them, then, become disciples, [at least from your deeds]. Become, therefore, ministers of God and the mouth of Christ. For the Lord says: “If you bring out what is precious from what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth.” Be humble against their anger; against their blasphemies set your earnest prayers; while they go astray, stand firm in the faith; overcome their fierce temper with gentleness, their wrath with meekness. For “blessed are the meek”; and Moses was meek above all men; and David was very meek. Therefore Paul exhorts: “The servant of the Lord,” he says, “must not … … forbearing, in meekness instructing those who wrong you. For “if I have repaid,” he says, “those who repaid me with evil.” Let us make them brothers by our gentleness. For say to those who hate you, “You are our brothers,” so that the name of the Lord may be glorified. And let us imitate the Lord, who … when suffering did not threaten, but prayed for his enemies: “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they do.” If anyone, the more he is wronged, the more he endures, he is blessed; if anyone is defrauded, if anyone is set at nought for the name of the Lord, he is truly Christ's. Take care that no plant of the devil be found among you; for it is bitter and salty. Be sober …

… These are the last times. Let us be ashamed; let us fear the long-suffering of God, lest we despise the riches of his goodness and forbearance. … or let us love the present joy in this life; and let the present and true joy be this alone: to be found in Christ Jesus, so as truly to live. Apart from him, may you not choose even to breathe. For he is my hope, he my boast, he my unfailing wealth, for whose sake I carry about my bonds from Syria to Rome, those spiritual pearls, in which may I be perfected through your prayer, and become a partaker of the sufferings of Christ and a sharer in his death, and in the resurrection from the dead, and in the unending life. May I attain it, so that I may be found in the lot of the Christians of Ephesus, who have always been in company with the apostles in the power of Jesus Christ: with Paul, John, and Timothy the most faithful.

I know who I am and to whom I write. I am the least, Ignatius, and … under danger … and in Christ. I have been handed over … but of those who are slain for Christ, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Ignatius, the least. But you are fellow initiates of Paul, the sanctified, the martyred, of whom it is testified that he is a chosen vessel; at whose feet may I be found, and at those of the other saints, when I attain to Jesus Christ; who always in his prayers remembers you.

Be eager, then, to come together more frequently for the Eucharist of God and for his glory. For when you come together frequently in the same place, the powers of Satan are cast down, and his fiery [darts] return without effect … and harmonious faith is his destruction and the torment of his shield-bearers. Nothing is better than the peace that is according to Christ, in which every war of aerial and earthly spirits is brought to nothing. “For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” [14] None of the devil's devices, then, will escape you if, like Paul, you have perfect faith and love toward Christ, which are the beginning and the end of life. The beginning of life is faith, and the end is love; and the two, joined in unity, make the man of God perfect; and all other things that belong to a noble life follow from them. No one who professes faith ought to sin, nor one who has acquired love to hate his brother. For he who said, “You shall love the Lord your God,” said also, “and your neighbour as yourself.” Those who profess to be Christ's are known not only by what they say but also by what they do. “For the tree is known by its fruit.” [15] It is better to be silent and to be, than to speak and not to be. “The kingdom of God is not in word but in power.” With the heart one believes, and with the mouth confesses: the one for righteousness, the other for salvation. It is good to teach, if the one who speaks also acts. For whoever “does and teaches, he shall be great in the kingdom.” Our Lord and God Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, first did and then taught, as Luke testifies, whose praise in the Gospel is throughout all the churches. Nothing escapes the Lord; even our secrets are near him. Let us therefore do all things as though he dwelt in us, that we may be his temples and he may be God in us. Let Christ speak in us, as he did in Paul; let the Holy Spirit teach us to utter the things of Christ in like manner to him. [16] Do not be deceived, my brothers: corrupters of households will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if those who ruin human households are condemned to death, how much more will those who attempt to corrupt the church of Christ pay an eternal penalty, the church for which the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, endured the cross and death? … will go into Gehenna. Likewise also every man who has received from God the power of discernment will be punished, if he follows an unskilled shepherd and accepts a false opinion as true. “What fellowship has light with darkness? Or Christ with [Belial]? Or what portion has a believer with an unbeliever? Or the temple of God with idols?” And I too say: what fellowship has truth with falsehood? Or righteousness with unrighteousness? Or true doctrine with false doctrine?

For this reason the Lord received ointment upon his head, that the church might breathe incorruption. For “your name,” he says, “is ointment poured out; therefore the maidens loved you; they drew you; after …” Let no one be anointed with the foul odour of the teaching of this age; let the holy church of God not be taken captive by his craftiness, as the first woman was. Why, being rational, do we not become wise? Why, having received from Christ an implanted criterion concerning God, do we fall into ignorance, and through carelessness, not knowing the gift we have received, foolishly …

The cross of Christ is a stumbling-block to unbelievers, but to believers salvation and eternal life. Where is the wise man? Where is the disputer? Where is the boasting of those who are called mighty? For the Son of God, who was begotten before the ages and established all things by the will of the Father, he was carried in the womb by Mary, according to the economy of God, of the seed of David, and by the Holy Spirit. For “behold,” he says, “the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and he shall be called Emmanuel.” He was born … the ordinance committed to the prophet. … [19] And the virginity of Mary and her giving birth were hidden from the ruler of this age, and likewise the death of the Lord: three mysteries of a loud cry, which were done in silence but have been revealed to us. A star shone in heaven beyond all those before it, and its light was unspeakable, and its novelty brought astonishment to those who saw it; and all the other stars, together with the sun and moon, became a chorus to the star, but it surpassed them all in its light; and there was perplexity whence came this novelty that had appeared. From then on worldly wisdom was made foolish, sorcery became idle talk and magic a laughing-stock; every law of wickedness vanished, the darkness of ignorance was scattered, and tyrannical rule was brought down, God appearing as man and man acting as God. But neither was the first a mere seeming, nor the second bare humanity; the one was truth, the other the economy. And what had been perfected with God received a beginning; from then on all things were moved together, because …

Stand firm, brothers, in the faith of Jesus Christ and in his love, in his passion and … [that you all] come together in common, in one faith of God the Father and of Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son, the firstborn of all creation, but according to the flesh of the family of David, being guided by the Paraclete, obeying the bishop and the presbytery with an undistracted mind, breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote that we should not die but live in God through Jesus Christ, a cleansing remedy that wards off evil.

May I be a ransom for you and for those whom you sent for the honour of God to Smyrna, from where I also write to you, giving thanks to the Lord and loving Polycarp as I love you. Remember me, as Jesus the Christ, blessed for ever, remembers you. Pray for the church of the Antiochenes in Syria, from where I am being led bound to Rome, being the last of the faithful there, just as I was counted worthy to wear these chains for the honour of God. Farewell in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, our common hope, in the Holy Spirit. Farewell. Amen. Grace [be with you]. Ignatius to the Ephesians.

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, by the grace of God the Father, in Christ Jesus the Saviour, in whom I greet the church which is in Magnesia on the Maeander, and pray [for it] in God the Father and in Christ Jesus our Lord: in whom may you have abundant greeting. [1] Having learned the well-ordered character of your love according to God, I rejoiced and chose to address you in the faith of Jesus Christ. For having been counted worthy of a divine and longed-for name, in the bonds which I carry about I sing the praises of the churches, for which I pray for union with the flesh and spirit of Jesus Christ, who is the Saviour of all people, especially of believers; by whose blood you were redeemed; through whom you have known God, or rather have been known by him; in whom, if you endure, you will escape all the abuse of this age. For he is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.

Since, then, I was counted worthy to see you through Damas, your bishop worthy of God, and the presbyters … and my fellow servant the deacon Zotion, whom may I enjoy, because he is subject to the bishop and the presbytery by the grace of God, in the law of Jesus Christ.

And it is fitting for you too not to despise the youth of the bishop, but according to the mind of God the Father to render him all reverence, as I have learned that the holy presbyters also do, not looking at his apparent youth but at his understanding in God … “nor do the aged know understanding; but there is a spirit in mortals.” For Daniel the wise was possessed by the divine Spirit at twelve years old, and convicted the elders who carried their grey hairs in vain as false accusers and men who lusted after another's beauty. And Samuel, while still a little boy, rebuked Eli, ninety years old, for having honoured his own sons above God. Likewise Jeremiah too hears from God: “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’” And Solomon and Josiah: the one, reigning at twelve, gave that awe-inspiring and hard-to-interpret judgment between the women concerning the children; the other, coming to rule at eight, threw down the altars and the sacred precincts and burned the groves, for they were dedicated to demons and not to God; and the … of men, and not worshippers of the Deity. Youth, then, is not to be despised when it is dedicated to God; but [despised is] he who is wicked in mind, even if he has “grown old in evil days.” Timothy the Christ-bearer was young; but hear what his teacher writes to him: “Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct.” It is fitting, then, that you also obey your bishop and contradict him in nothing; for it is a fearful thing to contradict such a one. For it is not this visible one that a person deceives; he is trying to cheat the invisible one, who cannot be cheated by anyone. And such a thing has reference not to man but to God. For God says to Samuel: “They have not rejected you, but me.” And Moses says: “For your murmuring is not against us but against the Lord God.” No one has remained unpunished who rose up against his superiors. For Dathan and Abiram did not speak against the law, but against Moses, and they went down alive into Hades. And Korah and those who conspired with him against Aaron … on a tree, and was pierced with darts in his evil-plotting heart, for a like cause. Uzziah is made leprous for daring against the priests and the priesthood. Saul is dishonoured for not waiting for Samuel the high priest. You too, therefore, must reverence your superiors. [4] It is fitting, then, not only to be called Christians but also to be so. For it is not being called, but being, that makes one blessed. If some speak of the bishop but do everything without him, to such people he himself will say, he who is the true and first bishop and the only high priest by nature: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” For such people seem to me to have no good conscience, but to be mere dissemblers and pretenders.

Since, then, things have an end, and there lie before us life from keeping [the commandments] and death from disobedience, and each, according to what he has chosen, is to go to his own place, let us flee death and choose life. For I say that two characters are found among men, the one of true coin and the other of counterfeit. The godly man is a true coin … but worked by the devil. I do not say that there are two natures of men, but that the one man becomes at one time God's and at another the devil's. If anyone is godly, he is a man of God; but if anyone is ungodly, he is a man of the devil, becoming so not by nature but by his own choice. The unbelievers bear the image of the ruler of wickedness; the believers bear the image of the ruler, God the Father, and of Jesus Christ; through whom, unless we freely hold ourselves ready to die for the truth into his passion, his life is not in us. [6] Since, then, in the persons mentioned above I have beheld your whole multitude in faith and love, I exhort you: be eager to do all things in the concord of God, the bishop presiding in the place of God, and the presbyters in the place of the council of the apostles, and the deacons, most dear to me, entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who, begotten by the Father before the age, was God the Word, the only-begotten Son, and at the consummation of the ages remains the same. “For of his kingdom there will be no end,” says Daniel the prophet. Let us all, then, love one another in concord, and let no one look on his neighbour according to the flesh, but in Christ Jesus. Let there be nothing among you that can divide you, but be united to the bishop, being subject to God through him in … [7] As, then, the Lord does nothing without the Father … … nothing; so you also [do nothing] without the bishop, neither presbyter nor deacon nor layman. … follow the bishop, as Christ Jesus … let him stand by him as Christ stands by the Father, and let him serve him blamelessly in all things, as Christ, doing nothing of himself, always does what pleases the Father. … against his mind; for such a thing is lawless and hostile to God. Come together all of you in the same place for prayer; let there be one common supplication, one mind, one hope, in love, in blameless faith in Christ Jesus, than whom nothing is better. Run together, all as one, into the temple of God, as to one altar, to one Jesus Christ, the high priest of the unbegotten God.

Do not be led astray by strange doctrines, nor by Jewish myths and conceits. “The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” For if we still live according to the Jewish law and the circumcision of the flesh, we deny that we have received grace. For the most divine prophets lived according to Jesus Christ; for this reason they were also persecuted, being inspired by grace, so as to convince the disobedient that there is one God, the Almighty, who manifested himself through Jesus Christ his Son, who is his Word, not spoken but substantial; for he is not the sound of articulate speech, but a begotten substance of divine energy, who in all things pleased him who sent him.

If, then, those who were brought up in the ancient writings came to newness of hope, expecting Christ, as the Lord teaches when he says, “If you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote of me”; and, “Your father Abraham … that he might see my day; and he saw it” … [how shall] we be able to live without him? Whose servants the prophets also were, who in the Spirit foresaw him, and waited for him as teacher, and looked for him as Lord and Saviour, saying, “He will come and save us.” Let us, then, no longer keep the Sabbath in the Jewish manner, rejoicing in days of idleness; for “he who does not work, let him not eat.” For “in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread,” say the oracles. But let each of you keep the Sabbath spiritually, rejoicing in meditation on the law, not in rest of the body, admiring the workmanship of God; not eating things prepared the day before, nor drinking lukewarm drinks, nor walking a measured distance, and … … rejoicing in things that have no sense. … the Lord's day, the day of the resurrection, the queen and chief of all the days; looking forward to which the prophet said, “To the end, for the eighth day”; on which our life also rose and victory over death was won in Christ; whom the children of perdition deny, the enemies of the Saviour, “whose god is the belly, who mind earthly things,” lovers of pleasure and not lovers of God, “having the form of godliness but denying its power”; the Christ-traffickers, peddling the Word and selling Jesus; the corrupters of women and coveters of what belongs to others … by the mercy of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us not, then, be insensible to his kindness. For if he should deal with us according to what we do, we would no longer exist. For “if you mark iniquities, … Lord, O Lord, who shall stand?” Let us, then, become … whoever is called by any other name besides this is not of God. For he has not received the prophecy that speaks of us: “They shall be called by a new name, which the Lord shall name, and shall be a holy people.” This was fulfilled first in Syria; for in Antioch the disciples were called Christians, while Paul and Peter were laying the foundations of the church. Put away, then, the evil leaven, grown old and rotten, and be changed into the new leaven of grace. Abide in Christ, so that the stranger may not lord it over you. It is absurd to speak of Jesus Christ with the tongue and to keep in the mind Judaism, which has come to an end. For where there is Christianity, there is no Judaism; and every tongue that confessed has been gathered to God; and those who were stony of heart have become children of God, friends of Abraham; and in his seed all who are ordained to eternal life in Christ have been blessed.

These things, my beloved, [I write] not because I have learned that any of you are so disposed; but as less than you I wish to guard you beforehand, that you may not fall into the hooks of vainglory, but be fully assured in Christ, who was begotten by the Father before all ages, but afterwards was born of Mary … healed among the people, and worked signs and wonders for the benefit of men; who proclaimed to those who had run aground on polytheism the one and only true God, his own Father; and underwent the passion, and endured the cross at the hands of the Christ-killing Jews, under Pontius Pilate the governor and Herod the king, and died, and rose, and ascended into the heavens to him who sent him, and sat down at his right hand, and is coming at the consummation of the ages with his Father's glory to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works. He who knows these things with full assurance and believes them is blessed; as you too are now lovers of God and lovers of Christ, in the full assurance of our hope, from which may it befall none of us to be turned aside.

May I have joy of you in all things, if indeed I am worthy. For even if I am bound, I am not worth one of you who are free. I know that you are not puffed up, for you have Jesus in yourselves. And all the more when I praise you, I know that you feel shame; as it is written: “The righteous man is his own accuser”; and, “Declare your sins first, that you may be justified”; and, “When you have done all that is commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants.” For “what is exalted among men is an abomination before God.” For “God,” he says, “be merciful to me, a sinner.” For this reason those great men, Abraham and Jacob, [called themselves] earth and ashes before … … God they called themselves. And David: “Who am I before you, Lord, that you have glorified me thus far?” And Moses, the meekest of all men, says to God: “I am weak of voice and slow of tongue.” Be humble-minded yourselves, then, that you may be exalted. For “he who humbles himself will be exalted, and he who exalts himself will be humbled.”

Be eager, then, to be confirmed in the decrees of the Lord and of the apostles, so that all that you do may prosper, in flesh and spirit, in faith and love, together with your most worthy bishop and the worthily woven spiritual crown of your presbytery and the deacons who are according to God. Be subject to the bishop and to one another, as Christ to the Father, that there may be union according to God among you. [14] Knowing that you are filled with every good thing, I have exhorted you briefly in the love of Jesus Christ. Remember me in your prayers, that I may attain to God, and the church in Syria, of which I am not worthy to be called bishop. For I need your united prayer and love in God, that the church in Syria may be counted worthy to be shepherded in Christ through your good order. [15] The Ephesians greet you from Smyrna, from where I also write to you; they are here for the glory of God, as you also are, who have refreshed me in all things, together with Polycarp. And the other churches also greet you in honour of Jesus Christ. Farewell in concord, you who possess an undivided spirit, in Christ Jesus, by the will of God.

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the holy church beloved by God the Father and by Jesus Christ, which is at Tralles, elect and worthy of God, having peace in the flesh and spirit of Christ our hope, in the passion through the cross and death, and in the resurrection; which I also greet in the fullness, in the apostolic manner …

I have learned that you possess a blameless mind, undissembling in endurance, not by habit but by possession, as Polybius your bishop has shown me, who came to Smyrna by the will of God the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ his Son, with the co-operation of the Spirit, and so rejoiced with me, who am bound in Christ Jesus, that I beheld your whole multitude in him. Having, then, received through him your goodwill according to God, I gave glory, finding you to be imitators of Jesus Christ the Saviour.

Be subject to the bishop as to the Lord. For he keeps watch over your souls, as one who will give account to God. Therefore you also appear to me to be living not according to man but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that, believing in his death, you may through baptism become sharers in his resurrection. It is necessary, therefore, … that you do. But be subject also to the presbytery, as to the apostles of Jesus Christ our hope, in whom, if we live, we shall be found. And the deacons too, being ministers of the mysteries of Christ Jesus, must please in every way; for they are not deacons of food and drink, but servants of the church of God. They must therefore guard against reproaches as against burning fire. Let them, then, be such.

And reverence them as Christ Jesus, of whose place they are the guardians, as the bishop too is a type of the Father of all, and the presbyters are the council of God and the band of the apostles of Christ. Without these there is no elect church, no gathering of saints, no congregation of the holy. And I am persuaded that you too are so disposed. For I received the pattern of your love, and have it with me, in your bishop, whose very bearing is a great lesson and his meekness a power; I think that even the godless reverence him. Loving you, I refrain from writing more sharply, lest I seem to some to be harsh or overbearing. I am bound for Christ, but I am not yet worthy of Christ; but if I am perfected, I shall perhaps become so. I do not give orders as an apostle. [4] But I measure myself, lest I perish through boasting. It is good to boast in the Lord. Even if I am strong in the things of God, I must fear the more, and not give heed to those who vainly puff me up; for those who praise me scourge me. But I do not know whether I am worthy; for the jealousy of the enemy is not seen by many, but it wars against me. I need, then, meekness, by which the ruler of this age is brought down.

For could I not write to you of more mystical things? But I fear lest I do you harm, since you are infants; and forgive me, lest, being unable to take in their force, you be choked. For I too, not because I am bound and am able to understand heavenly things, the angelic orders and the … of dominions, and of thrones and … the excellences of the cherubim and seraphim, the sublimity of the Spirit, the kingdom of the Lord, and above all the incomparable [majesty] of God the Almighty: knowing these things, I am not therefore already perfected, nor am I a disciple such as Paul and Peter; for much is lacking to me, that I may not fall short of God.

I exhort you, then, not I but the love of Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfected in the same judgment and the same mind. For there are some vain talkers and deceivers, not Christians but Christ-traffickers, carrying about the name of Christ in deceit, peddling the word of the Gospel, and mixing the poison of error with a sweet title, as with honeyed wine … so that one who drinks, deceived in his sense of taste by its pleasant quality, is caught unawares by death. One of the ancients advises: “Let no one be called good who mixes evil with good.” For they speak of Christ not in order to preach Christ but to set Christ aside; and not to establish the law but to proclaim lawlessness. For they make Christ a stranger to the Father, and the law a stranger to Christ; they slander the birth from the Virgin; they are ashamed of the cross; they deny the passion; and they do not believe the resurrection. They introduce God as unknown; they think Christ unbegotten; and as for the Spirit, they do not even confess that he exists. Some of them say that the Son is a mere man, and that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same; and that the creation is the work of God, not through Christ but through some other, strange power.

Guard yourselves, then, against such people, that you may not put a noose on your own souls; and make your life inoffensive to all men, that you may not become a snare on a watchtower and a net spread out. For he who does not heal himself in his own works is brother to him who destroys himself. If, then, you also put away conceit, arrogance, vanity and haughtiness, it is possible for you to be inseparable from God. For he is near to those who fear him; and, “On whom,” he says, “shall I look, but on the humble and quiet, and him who trembles at my words?” And reverence your bishop as Christ, as the blessed apostles commanded you. He who is within the altar is pure; therefore he also obeys the bishop and the presbyters. But he who is outside is the one who does anything without the bishop and the presbyters and the deacons; such a one is defiled in his conscience and is worse than an unbeliever. For what is a bishop but one who is above all rule and authority, ruling over all as far as it is possible for a man to rule, becoming according to his power an imitator of Christ the God? … And what is the presbytery but a sacred assembly …

… And what are the deacons but imitators of the angelic powers, ministering to him a pure and blameless ministry, as the holy Stephen did to the blessed James, Timothy and Linus to Paul, and Anencletus and Clement to Peter? He, then, who disobeys these would be altogether godless and impious, setting Christ at nought and belittling his ordinance. [8] I write these things to you not because I know of any such people among you; nay, may God, who did not spare his own Son for the sake of the holy church, never allow any such thing to come to my ears; but, foreseeing the snares of the [enemy], I fortify you beforehand by my exhortations, as my beloved and faithful children in Christ, giving you to drink beforehand the safeguards against the pestilent disease of the insubordinate, which disease you are avoiding by the good pleasure of Christ our Lord. You, then, putting on meekness, become imitators of his sufferings and of his love, with which he loved us, giving himself as a ransom for us, that he might cleanse us by his blood from our old ungodliness and give us life, when we were all but perishing through the wickedness that is in us. Let none of you, then, have anything against his neighbour. For “forgive,” says our Lord, “and it will be forgiven you.” Give no occasion to the Gentiles, lest on account of a few foolish people the word and the teaching be blasphemed. For “woe,” says the prophet as from the person of God, “to him through whom my name is blasphemed …

Be deaf, then, when anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was of the family of David, who was of Mary; who was truly born, and of … … of God and of the Virgin, but not in the same way; for … God and man. He truly took a body; for “the Word became flesh,” and lived without sin: “For which of you,” he says, “convicts me of sin?” He truly ate and drank. He was crucified and died under Pontius Pilate; truly, and not in appearance, he was crucified and died, while beings in heaven, on earth and under the earth looked on: in heaven, the bodiless natures; on earth, the Jews and Romans and those who were present at that time …; and the multitude that rose with the Lord. For “many bodies,” he says, “of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, the tombs being opened.” And he went down into Hades alone, but came up with a multitude; and he tore apart the age-old fence and broke down its middle wall. And he rose after three days, the Father raising him; and having spent forty days with the apostles, he was taken up to the Father and sat down at his right hand, waiting until his enemies are put under his feet. On the day of Preparation, then, at the third hour, he received sentence from Pilate, the Father permitting it; at the sixth hour he was crucified; at the ninth he breathed his last; before sunset he was buried. On the Sabbath he remained under the earth in the tomb in which Joseph of Arimathea had laid him. As the Lord's day was dawning he rose from the dead, according to what he himself had said: “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man also be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” The Preparation, then, contains the passion; the Sabbath, the burial; the Lord's day, the resurrection.

But if, as some who are godless, that is …

… [he became] man, did not truly take a body, and died in appearance, not suffering in reality, then why am I bound, and why do I pray to fight with beasts? Then I die in vain; then I am lying against the cross of the Lord; and the prophet is superfluous: “They shall look on him whom they pierced, and mourn over themselves as over one beloved.” These, then, are unbelievers no less than those who crucified him. But I do not place my hopes in one who died for me in appearance, but in reality; for falsehood is foreign to the truth. Truly, then, Mary bore a body that had God dwelling in it; and truly was God the Word born of the Virgin, clothed with a body of like passions with ours; truly he who forms all men in the womb came to be in a womb, and made for himself a body from the seeds of the Virgin, except only that it was without intercourse with man. He was carried in the womb, as we are, for the appointed times; and he was truly born, as we also are; and he was truly nourished … as we are. And having lived for three decades of years, he was baptized by John, truly and not in appearance; and having preached the Gospel for three years and done signs and wonders, by the … and Pilate the governor, the judge was judged, was scourged, … wore the crown of thorns and the purple robe, was condemned, was crucified truly, not in appearance, not in imagination, not by deceit; he truly died, and was buried, and was raised from the dead, as he prayed somewhere, saying, “But you, Lord, raise me up, and I will repay them.” And the Father, who always hears him, answers and says: “Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit among all the nations.” The Father, then, who raised him will also raise us through him, apart from whom no one will have true life. For he says: “I am the life; he who believes in me, though he die, will live; and everyone who lives and believes in me, though he die, will live for ever.” [11] Flee, then, the godless heresies; for they are inventions of the devil, the serpent who is the author of evil, who through the woman deceived Adam, the father of our race. Flee also his evil offshoots: Simon his firstborn son, and Menander, and Basilides, and all his gang … of wickedness, the man-worshippers, whom Jeremiah the prophet also calls accursed. Flee also the impure Nicolaitans, falsely so named, lovers of pleasure, slanderers. Flee also the offspring of the evil one, Theodotus and Cleobulus, who bear death-bringing fruit; whoever tastes it dies at once, not the temporary death but the eternal. These are not the planting of the Father but an accursed brood. “Every plant,” says the Lord, “which my heavenly Father has not planted, let it be rooted up.” For if they were branches of the Father, they would not be enemies of the cross of Christ, but rather of those who killed the Lord of glory. But now, denying the cross and being ashamed of the passion, [they cover up] the transgression of the Jews, those fighters against God, killers of the Lord; for it is too little to call them killers of the prophets. … But Christ invites you to his incorruption through his passion and resurrection, since you are his members.

I greet you from Smyrna, together with the churches of God that are present with me, whose leaders have refreshed me in every way, in flesh and in spirit. My bonds exhort you, which I carry about for the sake of Jesus Christ, asking that I may attain to God: continue in your concord with one another and in prayer. For it befits each of you, and especially the presbyters, to refresh the bishop, to the honour of the Father and to the honour of Jesus Christ and of the apostles. I pray that you hear me in love, lest by having written I be a witness against you. And pray for me also, who need your love in the mercy of God, that I may be counted worthy of the lot that lies before me to attain, that I may not …

The love of the Smyrnaeans and the Ephesians greets you. Remember our church in Syria, from which I am not worthy to take my name, being the last of those there. Farewell in the Lord Jesus Christ, being subject to the bishop, and likewise to the presbyters and the deacons. And love one another, each of you, with an undivided heart. My spirit greets you, not only now but also when I attain to God; for I am still in danger. But the Father of Jesus Christ is faithful to fulfil my request and yours; in him may we be found blameless. May I have joy of you in the Lord.

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the church that has obtained mercy in the majesty of the most high God the Father and of Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son; [beloved and enlightened] by the will of God who made all things that are, according to the faith and love of Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour; which presides in the place of the region of the Romans, worthy of God, … Spirit-bearing; which I also greet in the name of God Almighty and of Jesus Christ his Son: to those who are united in flesh and spirit to every commandment of his, filled with all the grace of God without wavering, and filtered clean of every foreign colour, abundant greeting in God the Father and in our Lord Jesus Christ. [1] Having prayed to God, I have obtained to see your faces, worthy of God, as I had asked even more to receive. For, being bound in Christ Jesus, I hope to greet you, if indeed it is [his] will that I be counted worthy to reach the end. For the beginning is well ordered, if I obtain grace to receive my lot to the end without hindrance. For I fear your love, lest it do me wrong. For it is easy for you to do what you wish; but it is difficult for me to attain to God, if you do not spare me, under pretext of carnal friendship.

For I do not want you to please men, but to please God, as indeed you do please him. For neither shall I ever have such an opportunity of attaining to God, nor can you, if you keep silent, have a better work [ascribed to you] … I shall become God's; but if you love my flesh, I shall again have to run my course. Grant me nothing more than to be poured out as a libation to God, while an altar is still ready, so that, becoming a choir in love, you may sing to the Father in Christ Jesus, because God has deemed the bishop of Syria worthy to be found at the setting of the sun, having sent for him from its rising, and calling him to be a witness of his own sufferings, to pass through from the world to God, that I may rise to him … [3] And I wish that those things may be firm which you enjoin as teachers. Only ask power for me, within and without, that I may not only speak but also will; that I may not only be called a Christian but also be found one. For if I am found to be one, I can also be called one, and then … Nothing that is seen is eternal; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal. The Christian is a work not of persuasion but of greatness, when he is hated by the world … by God. For “if you were of this world,” he says, “the world would love its own; but now you are not of the world, but I chose you: abide with me.”

I write to all the churches and I charge all, that I die willingly for God, … do not become an untimely kindness to me. Let me be food for the beasts, through whom it is possible to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found pure bread of God. Rather coax the beasts, that they may become my tomb and leave nothing of my body, so that, when I have fallen asleep, I may not be a burden to anyone. Then I shall truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world will not even see my body. Entreat the Lord for me, that through these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God. … I do not give you orders [as Peter and Paul did]: they were apostles of Jesus Christ, I am the least; they were free, as servants of God, but I am until now a slave; but if I suffer, I shall become a freedman of Jesus Christ, and shall rise in him free. Now, in my bonds, I am learning to desire nothing worldly or vain.

From Syria to Rome I am fighting with beasts, by land and sea, by night and day, bound to ten leopards, that is, a company of soldiers, who become worse even when they are treated well. But by their wrongs I am the more made a disciple; yet I am not by this justified. May I have joy of the beasts that are prepared for me; I pray that they may be found prompt with me; I will even coax them to devour me promptly, not as with some, whom out of cowardice they did not touch. And if they are unwilling of themselves, I will force them. Forgive me … I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing of things visible or invisible envy me, that I may attain to Jesus Christ. Fire and cross, and encounters with beasts, cuttings, tearings apart, … mangling of limbs, grinding of the whole body, and the punishment of the devil: let them come upon me, only that I may attain to Jesus Christ. [6] The ends of the world will profit me nothing, nor the kingdoms of this age. It is better for me to die for Jesus Christ than to reign over the ends of the earth. For “what does a man profit if he gains the whole world but … his own soul?” … I long for the Lord, the Son of the true God and Father, Jesus the Christ. Him I seek, who died and rose for us. Forgive me, brothers; do not hinder me from coming to life; for Jesus is the life of believers. Do not wish me to die; for life without Christ is death. Do not make a gift to the world of one who wishes to be God's. Allow me to receive pure light; when I have arrived there I shall be a man of God. Allow me to be an imitator of the passion of Christ my God. If anyone has him within himself, let him understand what I wish and sympathize with me, knowing what constrains me. [7] The ruler of this age wishes to carry me off and to corrupt my mind toward my God. Let none of you who are present help him; rather be on my side, that is, on God's. Do not speak of Jesus Christ while preferring the world. Let envy not dwell among you. Even if, when I am present, I entreat you, do not be persuaded; rather believe these things which I write to you. For I write to you while alive, longing to die for Christ. My love has been crucified, and there is no fire in me that loves anything; but living water, springing up in me, says to me within: “Come to the Father.” I take no pleasure in the food of corruption, nor in the pleasures … the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who in the last times came of the seed of David and Abraham; and as drink I desire his blood, which is incorruptible love and ever-flowing life. [8] I no longer wish to live according to men; and this will be, if you wish it. … “I have been crucified with Christ; and I live, yet no longer I,” since Christ lives in me. By this short letter I beg you, do not refuse me; believe me that I love Jesus, who was handed over for me. “What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?” But God the Father and the Lord Jesus the Christ will make these things plain to you, that I speak truly. And join in praying for me, that I may reach the goal, in the Holy Spirit. I have written to you not according to the flesh but according to the mind of God. If I suffer …

Remember in your prayer the church in Syria, which in my place has as its shepherd the Lord who said, “I am the shepherd”; and he alone will oversee it, and your love toward him. But I am ashamed to be called one of them; for I am not worthy, being the last of them and an untimely birth; but I have obtained mercy to be someone, if I attain to God. … of the churches that received me in the name of Jesus Christ, not as a passer-by; for even those that did not lie on my way went before me from city to city. [10] I write these things to you from Smyrna, by the Ephesians, who are worthy of all blessedness. And with me, along with many others, is Crocus, a name dear to me. As to those who went before me from Syria to Rome for the glory of God, I believe you have come to know them; make known to them that I am near. For they are all worthy of God and of you; it is fitting that you refresh them in every way. I have written these things to you on the ninth day before … in the endurance of Jesus Christ.

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the church of God the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ which is in Philadelphia, … established in the concord of God, rejoicing without wavering in the passion of our Lord Jesus, and fully assured in his resurrection in all mercy; which I greet in the blood of Jesus Christ, which is eternal and abiding joy; especially if they are at one with the bishop and the presbyters and deacons, appointed by the will of God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his own will firmly established his church upon the rock … the winds and the rivers beating against it have not been able to overturn it; nor may the spiritual forces of wickedness ever prevail, but may they be weakened by the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Having seen your bishop, I know that it was not of himself, nor through men, nor out of vainglory, that he was counted worthy to be entrusted with the ministry that concerns the common good, but in the love of Jesus Christ and of God the Father who raised him from the dead. I am struck with amazement at his gentleness: by silence he can do more than those who talk much. For he is attuned to the commandments of the Lord and his ordinances as strings to a lyre, and he is blameless no less than Zechariah the priest. Therefore my soul counts blessed his mind toward God, knowing it to be virtuous and perfect, and his steadfastness and freedom from anger in all the gentleness of the living God.

As children of light and truth, flee the division of unity and the evil teaching of the heretics, from whom “defilement has gone forth into all the land.” And where the shepherd is, there follow as sheep. For many wolves … those who run towards God; but in your unity they will have no place.

Keep away, then, from the evil plants, which Jesus Christ does not tend, but the man-slaying beast, because they are not the Father's planting but the seed of the evil one. It is not because I have found division among you that I write these things; but I fortify you beforehand as children of God. For as many as are of Christ … turn away from him and embrace communion with the accursed, these will be cut off with them; for they are not Christ's husbandry but the enemy's sowing; from whom may you always be delivered by the prayers of the one who presides over you … you, then, in the Lord: as many as repent and come to the unity of the church, receive them with all gentleness, so that through your kindness and forbearance they may become worthy of Jesus Christ and obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom of Christ. Brothers, do not be deceived: if anyone follows one who makes a schism from the truth, he will not inherit the kingdom of God; and if anyone does not stand apart from the lying preacher, he will be condemned to Gehenna. For one must neither separate from the godly nor associate with the ungodly. If anyone walks in a strange opinion, he is not Christ's, nor a partaker of his passion, but is a fox, a destroyer of the vineyard of Christ. Do not mix with such a person, lest you perish with him, even if he be father or son or brother or kinsman. For “your eye,” he says, “shall not spare him.” You too, then, must hate those who hate God, and pine away over his enemies; yet not beat them or persecute them, as do the Gentiles who do not know the Lord and God, but regard them as enemies and separate from them, while admonishing them and exhorting them to repentance, if perhaps they will hear, if perhaps they will yield. For our God is a lover of mankind, and “wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Therefore he “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust”; and wishing us also to be imitators of his kindness, the Lord says: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I am confident of you in the Lord that you will think nothing else. Therefore I write boldly to your God-worthy love, exhorting you to use one faith, one preaching, and one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of the Lord Jesus, and one is his blood that was shed for us; one bread also was broken for all, and one cup was distributed to all; one altar for the whole church … deacons, my fellow servants. Since also there is one unbegotten, God and Father; and one only-begotten Son, God the Word, and man; and one Paraclete, the Spirit of truth; and one preaching, and one faith, and one baptism; and one church, which the holy apostles founded from one end [of the earth] to the other in the blood of Christ, with their own sweat and toil. You too, then, “as a people of his own possession and a holy nation,” must accomplish all things in concord in Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands in the fear of God. Virgins, [be subject] to Christ in incorruption, not abhorring marriage, but for the sake of the study of the law. Children, obey your parents and love them as God's fellow workers in your birth. Slaves, be subject to your masters in God, that you may become freedmen of Christ. Husbands, love your wives as fellow servants of God, as your own body, as partners of your life and fellow workers in the bearing of children. Virgins, have Christ alone before your eyes, and his Father, in your prayers, being enlightened by the Spirit. May I have joy of your purity, as of Elijah, of Joshua the son of Nun, of Melchizedek, of Elisha, of Jeremiah, of John the Baptist, of the beloved disciple, of Timothy, of Titus, of Euodius, of Clement, who departed this life in chastity. Yet I do not blame the other blessed ones because they were joined in marriage … For [I pray that], being found worthy of God, [I may be found] at their feet in the kingdom, as at the feet of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, of Joseph and Isaiah and the other prophets, of Peter and Paul and the other apostles who were married; it was not from eagerness for the thing, but out of regard for their posterity, that they had wives. Fathers, bring up your children in the discipline and admonition of the Lord, and teach them the sacred writings and also trades, so that they may not take pleasure in idleness. For “a righteous father,” he says, “brings up well; his heart will be glad over a wise son.” Masters, attend kindly to your servants, as holy Job taught; for there is one nature and one race of humanity. For in Christ there is neither …

… together with all the people and the soldiers and the rulers and Caesar, [be subject] to the bishop; the bishop … but like Judith the most venerable, like Anna the most chaste. These things I do not command as an apostle; for who am I, or what is my father's house, that I should call myself equal in honour to them? But as your fellow soldier, holding the rank of a prompter. [5] … but through me the Lord Jesus, in whom, being bound, I … to the Gospel as to the flesh of Jesus Christ, and to the apostles … drew one and the same wicked, deceitful spirit that leads the people astray; so also the … … [prophets and the] apostles received one and the same holy Spirit, good and sovereign, true and teaching, from God through Jesus Christ. For there is one God of the Old and New Covenant; one mediator between God and men, both for the creation of things intelligible and sensible and for providence that is fitting and suitable; and one also is the Paraclete, who worked in Moses and the prophets and the apostles. All the saints, then, were saved in Christ, having hoped in him and waited for him; and through him they obtained salvation, being saints worthy of love and of admiration, to whom Jesus Christ has borne witness in the Gospel of the common hope …

If anyone proclaims the one God of the law and the prophets but denies that Christ is the Son of God, he is a liar, as is his father the devil; and such a one is a false Jew of the circumcision below. If anyone confesses Christ Jesus as Lord but denies the God of the law and the prophets, saying that the maker of heaven and earth is not the Father of Christ, such a one has not stood in the truth, any more than his father the devil; and such a one is a disciple of Simon the Magus, not of the Holy Spirit. If anyone says there is one God, and confesses Christ Jesus too, but thinks the Lord a mere man, not the only-begotten God and Wisdom and Word of God, but thinks him to consist only of soul and body, such a one is a serpent, preaching deceit and error for the destruction of men; and such a one is poor in understanding, as his name is Ebion. If anyone confesses these things, but calls lawful intercourse and the procreation of children corruption and defilement, or [holds] certain foods abominable, such a one has the apostate dragon dwelling in him. If anyone confesses the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and praises the creation, but calls the incarnation a semblance and is ashamed of the passion, such a one has denied the faith, no less than the Christ-killing Jews. If anyone confesses these things, and that God the Word dwelt in a human body, being in it as the Word, as the soul is in the body, because it was God who dwelt in it and not a human soul, but says that unlawful unions are something good, and places the goal of happiness in pleasure, as does the falsely named Nicolaitan, such a one can be neither a lover of God nor a lover of Christ, but is a corrupter of his own flesh, and therefore empty of the Holy Spirit and a stranger to Christ. All such are pillars and tombs of the dead, on which only the names of dead men are written. Flee, then, the wicked arts and snares of the spirit that is now at work in the sons of this age, lest, being hard pressed, you grow weak in love; but come together, all of you, with undivided heart and willing soul, of one soul, of one mind, always holding the same opinions about the same things, both in ease and in dangers, in sorrows and in joys. I thank God through Jesus Christ that I have a good conscience among you, and that no one can boast, either secretly or openly, that I was a burden to anyone, in small or in great. And for all among whom I have spoken, I pray that they may not take it as a testimony against themselves.

For even if some wished to deceive me according to the flesh, yet my spirit is not deceived; for I have received it from God. For it knows whence it comes and where it goes, and it exposes hidden things. For I cried out while I was among you, I spoke with a loud voice, the word not mine but God's: “Give heed to the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons.” But if you suspect me of saying these things because I had learned beforehand of the division of some, he for whose sake I am bound is my witness that I did not learn it from any human mouth; but the Spirit proclaimed to me, saying this: “Do nothing without the bishop. Keep your flesh as the temple of God. Love union; flee divisions. Become imitators of Paul and of the other apostles, as they also were of Christ.”

I, then, did my part, as a man fitted for union, adding this also: that where there is division of mind, and wrath, and hatred, there God does not dwell. To all who repent, then, God grants forgiveness, if they run together into the unity of Christ and the council of the bishop. I trust in the grace of Jesus Christ that he will loose from us every bond of unrighteousness. I exhort you, then, do nothing out of rivalry, but according to the teaching of Christ. For I heard some saying: “Unless I find the Gospel in the archives, I do not believe.” To such people I say that my archives are Jesus the Christ, to disobey whom is manifest destruction. My authentic archive is his cross and death and his resurrection, and the faith concerning these, by which I wish, through your prayer, to be justified. He who disbelieves the Gospel disbelieves all things together. For the archives are not to be preferred to the Spirit. “It is hard to kick against the goads”; hard to disbelieve Christ; hard to set aside the …

The priests are good, and the ministers of the word; but better is the high priest, who has been entrusted with the Holy of Holies, who alone has been entrusted with the secrets of God. Good are the ministering powers of God. Holy is the Paraclete, and holy is the Word, the Son of the Father, through whom the Father made all things and exercises providence over all. He is the way that leads to the Father, the rock, the fence, the key, the shepherd, the sacrifice, the door of knowledge, through which entered Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, Moses and the whole choir of the prophets, and the pillars of the world, the apostles, and the bride of Christ, for whom, by way of a dowry, he poured out his own blood, that he might redeem her. All these lead to the unity of the one and only true God. But the Gospel has something distinctive: the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ, his passion, and the resurrection itself. For what the prophets announced, saying, “Until he comes for whom it is reserved, and he shall be the expectation of the nations,” has been fulfilled in the Gospel: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” All things together, then, are good: the law, the prophets, the apostles, the whole assembly that has believed through them; only if we love one another.

Since, in answer to your prayer and to the compassion you have in Christ Jesus, it has been reported to me that the church in Antioch of Syria is at peace, it is fitting for you, as a church of God, … an embassy of God, that it may be granted to them to come together and glorify the name of God. Blessed in Christ Jesus is he who will be counted worthy of such a ministry; and you too, if you are zealous, will be glorified in Christ. And if you are willing, it is not impossible for you [to do this] for the name of God, as the nearest churches have always sent bishops, and others presbyters and deacons.

As for Philo the deacon, a man from Cilicia, of good report, who even now ministers to me in the word, together with Gaius and Agathopus, a chosen man, who follows me from Syria, having renounced this life, who also bear witness to you … [as you received] them, so may the Lord receive you. But may those who dishonoured them be redeemed by the grace of Jesus Christ, who does not wish the … The love of the brothers in Troas greets you, from where I also write to you through Burrhus, who was sent with me by the Ephesians and Smyrnaeans as a mark of honour. The Lord Jesus Christ will reward them, in whom they hope in flesh, soul, spirit, faith … Christ, our common hope, in the Holy Spirit.

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the church of God the most high Father and of his beloved Son Jesus Christ, which has obtained mercy in every gift, filled with faith and love, lacking in no gift, most worthy of God and bearing holiness, which is at Smyrna in Asia, in a blameless spirit and the word …

I glorify God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who through him has thus … in immovable faith, as if nailed to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in flesh and spirit, and established in love in the blood of Christ, fully persuaded, as is the truth, concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, God the Word, the only-begotten Son, who was of the family of David according to the flesh, of Mary the virgin; baptized by John, that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him; who lived a holy life without sin, and under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch was nailed for us in the flesh, truly. From him we are, from his divinely blessed passion, that he might raise a standard for the ages through the resurrection for his saints and faithful, whether among Jews or among Gentiles, in the one body of his church.

For he suffered all these things for us. And he truly suffered, not in appearance, as he also truly rose; but not as some of the unbelievers, who are ashamed of the formation of man, and of the cross, and of death itself, and say that he took the body from the Virgin in appearance and not in truth, and suffered in appearance, forgetting him who said, “The Word became flesh”; and, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; and, “If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to myself.” The Word, then, dwelt in flesh; for “Wisdom built herself a house.” The Word raised up on the third day his own temple, which had been destroyed by the Christ-fighting Jews. The Word, when his flesh was lifted up like the bronze serpent in the wilderness, drew all to himself for eternal salvation.

But I know that he was in a body not only in his birth and crucifixion; I know that after the resurrection too he was in the flesh, and …

… [I believe] that he is so. And when he came to those around Peter, he said to them: “Take, handle me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon. For a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see me having.” And to Thomas he says: “Put your finger here into the print of the nails, and bring your hand and put it into my side.” And at once they believed that he was the Christ. Therefore Thomas also says to him: “My Lord and my God.” For this reason they also despised death … for it is too little to say insults and blows. And not only so, but after he had shown himself to them, that he had risen truly and not in appearance, he both ate and drank with them for forty whole days; and so, with the flesh, while they looked on, he was taken up to him who sent him, and with it he is coming again with glory and power. For the oracles say: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven.” But if they say that he will come without a body at the consummation of the age, how will those who pierced him see him, and recognize him and mourn over themselves? For bodiless beings have neither form nor shape, nor the figure of a living thing that has a form, because of the simplicity of their nature. [4] I exhort you to these things, beloved, knowing that you too are so minded. But I guard you beforehand against beasts in human form, whom you must not only turn away from but flee; only pray for them, if somehow they may repent. For if the Lord was in a body in appearance and was crucified in appearance, then I too am bound in appearance. And why have I given myself up to death, to fire, to the sword, to beasts? But not in appearance but in reality I endure all things for Christ, so as to suffer with him, while he strengthens me; for I have no such strength of my own.

Some, being ignorant of him, have denied him, and are advocates of falsehood rather than of the truth; whom neither the prophecies persuaded, nor the law of Moses, nor even the Gospel until now, nor our own individual sufferings. For they think the same about us also. For what does it profit, if someone praises me … … the flesh-bearing God. But he who does not say this … their names, being those of unbelievers, it has not seemed good to me to write down now; nor may it befall me to remember them until they repent.

Let no one be deceived: unless he believes that Christ Jesus lived in the flesh, and confesses his cross and passion and the blood which he shed for the salvation of the world, he will not obtain eternal life, whether he be king or priest or ruler or private person, master or slave, man or woman. “He who is able to receive it, let him receive it; he who hears, let him hear.” Let not place or rank or wealth puff anyone up, nor lack of honour or poverty humble anyone. For the whole is faith toward God and hope toward Christ, the enjoyment of the good things looked for, and love toward God and toward one's own kind. For “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbour as yourself.” And the Lord says: “This is eternal life, to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.” And: “A [new] commandment … On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets.” Observe, then, those who hold strange opinions … the Father of Christ, how they have a faithless enmity toward one another. They have no care for love; they disregard the things looked for; they reckon present things as abiding; they overlook the commandments; the widow and the [orphan] they laugh at …

… of that spirit, the author of evil, who through the woman drove Adam out by means of the commandment, who slew Abel through Cain, who [fought against] Job, who accused Joshua the son of [Jozadak], who … the faith of the apostles, who stirred up the Jewish multitude against the Lord, who is now also at work in the sons of disobedience; from whom the Lord Jesus Christ will deliver us, who prayed that the faith of the apostles might not fail, not as though he were not able himself to guard it, but as rejoicing in the pre-eminence of the Father. It is fitting, then, to keep away from such people, and neither to speak with them in private nor [to have dealings with them] in public, but to give heed to the law … the saving word. But flee the ill-named heresies and those who make schisms, as the beginning of evils.

All of you follow the bishop, as Christ Jesus follows the Father, and the presbytery as the apostles. Reverence the deacons as those who minister the command of God. Let no one do any of the things that pertain to the church apart from the bishop. … which is under the bishop, or one to whom he entrusts it. Wherever the bishop appears, there let the multitude be; just as where Christ is, all the heavenly host stands by, as by the chief captain of the Lord's power and the dispenser of every intelligent nature. It is not lawful apart from the bishop either to baptize, or to offer, or to present sacrifice, or to hold a love-feast; but whatever seems good to him is in accordance with the good pleasure of God, so that everything may be safe and valid.

It is reasonable, finally, for us to return to soberness, while we still have time to repent toward God. For in Hades there is no one who makes confession. For behold the man, and his work before his face … … “Honour God, my son,” he says, “and the king.” But I say: honour God as the cause and Lord of all, and the bishop as high priest, bearing the image of God: of God in ruling, of Christ in serving as priest. And after him one must honour the king also. For no one is greater than God or like him among all beings; nor is there anything in the church greater than the bishop, consecrated to God for the salvation of the whole world; nor is anyone among rulers like the king, who secures peace and good order for his subjects. He who honours the bishop will be honoured by God; just as he who dishonours him will be punished by God. For if he who rises against kings will justly be held worthy of punishment, as one who dissolves the common good order, how much worse a penalty, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy of who chooses to do anything without the bishop, tearing apart concord and throwing good order into confusion? For the priesthood is the summit of all good things among men; whoever rages against it dishonours not man but God, and Christ Jesus, the firstborn and only high priest of the Father by nature. Let everything, then, be done among you in good order in Christ. Let the laity be subject to the deacons; the deacons to the presbyters; the presbyters to the bishop; the bishop to Christ, as he is to the Father. As you have refreshed me, brothers, so may Jesus the Christ refresh you. You loved me absent and present; God … you, for whose sake you have shown these things to his prisoner. For even if I am not worthy, yet your zeal is great. For “he who honours a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward.” … He who honours a prisoner of Jesus Christ will receive the reward of martyrs.

Philo and Gaius and Agathopus, who followed me for the word of God, being deacons of Christ, you did well to receive as deacons of Christ. They also give great thanks to the Lord for you, because you refreshed them in every way. Nothing that you have done for them will be reckoned as lost to you. “May the Lord grant you to find mercy from the Lord on that day.” My spirit is a ransom for you, and my bonds, which … the perfect hope, Jesus the Christ.

Your prayers have reached the church of the Antiochenes, and it is at peace. Coming from there in bonds, I greet all, not being worthy to be from there, being the last of them; but according to the will of God I was counted worthy, not from any consciousness of my own, but by the grace of God, which I pray may be given to me in full, so that through your prayers I may attain to God. That your work, then, may be perfect on earth and in heaven, it is fitting that your church, for the honour of God, should appoint an ambassador of God, so that, when he has come to Syria, he may rejoice with them that they are at peace, have recovered their proper greatness, and have had their proper body restored to them. What seemed to me worthy is this: to send one of your own with a letter, that he may join in glorifying the calm that has come to them according to God … Christ, through your prayers. Being perfect, think perfect things also. For when you wish to do well, God is ready to grant it.

The love of your brothers in Troas greets you, from where I also write to you through Burrhus, whom you sent with me together with the Ephesians your brothers, who refreshed me in every way. And would that … of the ministry of God. The grace of the Lord will reward him in all things. I greet your God-worthy bishop Polycarp, and the godly presbytery, and the Christ-bearing deacons, my fellow servants, and all of you individually and in common, in the name of Christ Jesus, and in his flesh and blood, his passion and resurrection, both bodily and spiritual, in the unity of God and of you. Grace to you, mercy, peace, endurance, always in Christ.

I greet the households of my brothers, with their wives and children, and the ever-virgins, and the widows. Farewell to me in the power of the Spirit. Philo, my fellow deacon, who is with me, greets you. I greet the house of Gavia, which I pray may be strengthened in faith and love, both bodily and spiritual … and Daphnus the incomparable, and Eutecnus, and all by name. Farewell in the grace of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit and with divine and sacred wisdom.

[To Polycarp,] bishop of Smyrna. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who is also a martyr of Jesus Christ, to Polycarp, [overseen] by God the Father and Jesus Christ: abundant greeting.

Approving your mind in God, founded as upon an immovable rock, I give exceeding glory that I was counted worthy of your blameless face, of which may I have joy in God. I exhort you, by the grace with which you are clothed … that they may be saved. Vindicate your office with all diligence, both of flesh and of spirit. Care for union, than which nothing is better. Bear with all, as the Lord also bears with you; put up with all in love, as indeed you do. Give yourself to unceasing prayers; ask for more understanding than you have; be watchful, possessing a sleepless spirit. Speak to each individually after the manner of God. … as the Lord does of all. For “he himself,” he says, “took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” Where there is more toil, there is much gain.

If you love good disciples, it is no credit to you; rather bring the more troublesome into subjection by gentleness. Not every wound is healed by the same plaster; … Be wise as the serpent in all things …

… For this reason you are of soul and body, fleshly and spiritual, so that you may set right the things that appear before your face, and ask that the invisible things may be revealed to you, so that you may lack nothing and abound in every gift. The time demands that you pray. For as wind assists a pilot, and suitable harbours a storm-tossed ship for its safety, so prayer [assists] you to attain to God. Be sober, as God's athlete, whose will is incorruption and eternal life, of which you too are persuaded. In all things I am a ransom for you, I and my bonds, which you loved. [3] … teaching strange doctrines, let them not dismay you. Stand firm like an anvil when it is struck. It is the mark of a great athlete to be flayed and to conquer. And especially for God's sake we must endure all things, that he too may endure us into the kingdom. Add more to your zeal than you have; run more intensely; learn to understand the times. As you are here, conquer; for here is the stadium, and there the crowns. Look for Christ the Son of God, the timeless in time, invisible by nature, visible in the flesh; the impalpable and intangible, as bodiless, but for us touchable and tangible in a body; the impassible as God, but for us passible as man; who in every way for us endured …

Let the widows not be neglected; after the Lord, be their guardian. Let nothing be done without your consent; and do nothing without the mind of God, as indeed you do not. Stand firm. Let meetings be held more often. Seek out all by name. Do not be haughty toward slaves, male or female; but neither let them be puffed up, but let them serve the more to the glory of God, that they may obtain a better freedom from God. Let them not desire to be set free at the common expense, lest they be found slaves of desire. [5] … about these … Speak to my sisters, that they love the Lord and be content with their husbands in flesh and spirit. Likewise charge my brothers, in the name of Jesus Christ, to love their wives as the Lord loves the church. If anyone is able to remain in chastity to the honour of the flesh of the Lord, let him remain so without boasting; if he boasts, he is lost; and if it becomes known to anyone besides the bishop, he is corrupted. It is fitting for men and women who marry to make their union with the consent of the bishop, that the marriage may be according to the Lord and not according to desire. Let all things be done to the honour of God. [6] Give heed to the bishop, that God also may give heed to you. I am a ransom for those who are subject to the bishop, the presbytery and the deacons; with them may it be my lot to have my portion from God. Toil together with one another, … rise up together, as God's stewards and assessors and servants. Please him whose soldiers you are, from whom you will also receive your wages. Let none of you be found a deserter. Let your baptism remain as your arms; your faith as a helmet; love as a spear; endurance as full armour. Let your works be your deposits, that … Be long-suffering, then, with one another in gentleness, as God is with you. May I have joy of you always.

Since the church in Antioch of Syria is at peace, as has been made known to me, through your prayer, I too have become more cheerful in a freedom from care that comes from God, if indeed through suffering I attain to God, so as to be found a disciple through your intercession. It is fitting … most godly, and to appoint someone whom you hold very dear and who is unwearying, who will be able to be … to go to Syria, so that, going to Syria, he may glorify your unwearying love to the glory of God. A Christian has no authority over himself, but gives his time to God. This work is God's and yours, when you complete it. For I trust in grace that you are ready for a good deed that belongs to God. Knowing your earnestness for the truth, I have exhorted you by a short letter.

Since, then, I have not been able to write to all the churches, because I am sailing suddenly from Troas to Neapolis, as the will [of God] commands, you will write to the churches in front, as one who possesses the mind of God, so that they too may do this: those who are able sending messengers on foot, and the rest letters through those sent by you, that you may be glorified by an eternal work, as you are worthy. I greet all by name, and the wife of the Procurator, with her whole household and her children. I greet Attalus my beloved. I greet him who is to be counted worthy to go to Syria. Grace will be with him always, and with Polycarp who sends him. I pray for your health always in Christ our God, in whom may you remain in the unity of God and his oversight. I greet Alce, a name dear to me. Amen. Grace. Farewell in the Lord.

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the church that is saved in Christ … mercy and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be multiplied always.

From Syria to Rome I am fighting with beasts, not being devoured by irrational beasts, for these, as you know, by God's will spared Daniel … but I make no account of any terrors, nor do I hold my life dear to myself, as though I loved it more than the Lord. Therefore I am ready for fire, for beasts, for sword, for cross, only that I may see Christ, my Saviour and God, who died for me. I therefore, the prisoner of Christ, who am driven over land and sea, exhort you: stand firm in the faith; be steadfast, for “the righteous shall live by faith”; be unwavering, for “the Lord makes those of one way to dwell in a house.”

I have learned that certain servants of Satan wished to trouble you: some saying that Jesus was crucified in appearance and died in appearance; others, that he is not the Son of the Creator; others, that he himself is the God over all; others, that he is a mere man; others, that this flesh does not rise, and that one must live and pursue a life of enjoyment, for this is the limit of good things for those who will shortly perish. Such a swarm of evils has burst in. But you did not yield to their subjection even for an hour. For you are fellow citizens and disciples of Paul, who [preached] the Gospel from Jerusalem … and the marks of Christ …

Remembering him, you know assuredly that Jesus the Lord was truly born of Mary, having become …

… says: “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of the Lord Jesus.” And he truly suffered and died and rose. For “if Christ is subject to suffering,” he says, “if he is the first to rise from the dead.” And: “The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.” Otherwise what need of chains, if Christ did not die? What need of endurance? What need of scourges? Why was Peter crucified, and Paul and James cut down with the sword, and John exiled to Patmos, and Stephen put to death with stones by the Lord-killing Jews? But none of these things was in vain; for the Lord was truly crucified by the ungodly. [4] And that he who was born of a woman is the Son of God, and that he who was crucified is the firstborn of all creation and God the Word, and that he himself made all things. For the apostle says: “There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” And again: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ”; and “in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; and he is before all things, and all things in him …

And that he is not himself the God over all and the Father, but his Son, he says: “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” And: “When all things have been subjected to him, then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.” So he who subjected, and who is all in all, is one; and another is he to whom all things were subjected, who also himself with all things is subjected. [6] Nor is he a mere man, through whom and in whom all things came to be. For “all things came to be through him.” “When he made the heaven, I was present with him, and I was there with him, fitting things together, and he delighted in me daily.” How could a mere man … say, “Before Abraham came to be, I am”? And, “Glorify me with the glory which I had before the world …”? Of what man did he say, “He was the light … that comes into the world; he was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and the world did not know him; … ”? How then is such a one a mere man, having the beginning of his being from Mary, and not God the Word and only-begotten Son? For “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And elsewhere: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me; and before all the hills he begets me.”

And that our bodies rise, he says: “Amen, I say to you, the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” And the Apostle: “For this corruptible must …” … live … and justly … Again he says: “Do not be deceived: neither adulterers nor the effeminate nor …” … [if the dead] are not raised, neither has Christ been raised; then our preaching is empty, and empty too is [your] faith …

… then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. But if we are so disposed, how shall we differ from asses and dogs, which take no thought for the future but think only of eating, and come to desire [the things] that follow eating? For they are without understanding of the mind that moves within. [8] … each of you put away wickedness and bestial anger, slander, false accusation, foul talk, coarse jesting, … vainglory, envy, and everything akin to these. … Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Presbyters, be subject to the bishop; deacons, to the presbyters; the people, to the presbyters and the deacons. I am a ransom for those who keep this good order; and may the Lord be with them continually.

Husbands, love your wives; wives, your husbands. Children, reverence your parents; parents, bring up your children in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. Honour those in virginity as priestesses of Christ, and the widows in sobriety as the altar of God. Slaves, serve your masters with fear; masters, give orders to your slaves with forbearance. Let no one among you be idle; for idleness is the mother of want. These things I do not enjoin as being someone, even though I am bound, but as a brother I remind you. May the Lord be with you.

May I have joy of your prayers … the church [in Antioch]. The churches of the Philippians greet you, from where I also write to you. Philo your deacon greets you, to whom I also give thanks, for he zealously serves me in all things. Agathopus the deacon from Syria greets you, who follows me in Christ. Greet one another with a holy kiss. I greet all, men and women, in Christ. Farewell in body and soul and in one spirit; and do not forget me. The Lord be with you.

… by God, chosen by Christ, sojourning in Syria and first to receive the name of Christ, which is in Antioch: greeting in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. [1] The Lord has made my bonds light and easy, since I learned that you are at peace and live in all concord, of flesh and of spirit. I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthily of the calling … guarding against the heresies of the evil one that have burst in, for the deceit and destruction of those who believe them … to believe the law and the prophets, to cast away all Jewish and Greek error, and neither to bring in a multitude of gods nor to deny Christ on the pretext of the one God.

For Moses, the faithful servant of God, when he said, “The Lord your God, the Lord is one,” and so proclaimed the one and only God, at once confessed our Lord as well, saying, “The Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone from the Lord.” And again: “And God said, Let us make man after our image; and God made man; after the image of God he made him.” And further: “In the image of God he made man.” And that he would become man, he says: “The Lord will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers, like me.” [3] And the prophets, when they say as from the person of God, “I am God, the first, and I am after these things, and besides me there is no God,” speak of the Father of all; and of our Lord Jesus Christ: “A Son,” they say, “has been given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder from above; and his name is called Angel of great counsel, Wonderful, Counsellor, God, Mighty, Potentate”; and of his becoming man: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel”; and of his passion: “As a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer, dumb”; and, “I was like an innocent lamb led to be sacrificed.” [4] And the evangelists, when they said that the one Father is the only true God, did not omit what concerns our Lord, but wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be that has come to be.” And of his becoming man: “The Word,” he says, “became flesh and dwelt among …” … David, the son of Abraham.” And the apostles, saying that “God is one,” said also that there is “one mediator between God and men”; and they were not ashamed of the incarnation and the passion. For what does he say? “The man Jesus Christ, who gave himself” for the life and salvation of the world. [5] Whoever, then, proclaims one God only, so as to do away with the divinity of Christ, is a devil and an enemy of all righteousness; and he who confesses Christ, yet not as Son of the maker of the world but of some other, unknown being besides him whom the law and the prophets proclaimed, is an instrument of the devil himself. And he who rejects the incarnation and is ashamed of the cross, for which I am bound, is Antichrist. And he who says that Christ is a mere man is accursed, according to the prophet, as trusting not in God but in man; and therefore also … [6] I write these things to you, new olive tree of Christ, not because I know of any such mind among you, but guarding you beforehand, as a father his own children. Beware, then, of the evil workers, the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose glory is in their shame. Beware of the dogs, the dumb ones, the serpents that crawl … [7] You have become disciples of Paul and Peter; do not lose what was entrusted to you. Remember Evodius, your most blessed shepherd, who was the first to be entrusted by the apostles with your leadership. Let us not put our father to shame; let us be true children and not bastards. You know how I lived among you; what I said to you when present, I write also when absent: “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema.” Imitators of me … … become. May I be a ransom for you when I [attain to] Jesus …

Presbyters, shepherd the flock that is among you, until God shows who is to rule over you. For I am already being poured out, that I may gain Christ. Let the deacons know of what dignity they are, and let them be eager to be blameless, that they may be imitators of Christ. Let the people be subject to the presbyters and the deacons. Let the virgins know …

Let husbands love their wives, remembering that one woman was given to one man, not many to one, at the creation. Let wives honour their husbands as their own flesh, and not dare to call them by name; and let them be chaste, [regarding] only their husbands … the mind of God. Parents, bring up your children with sacred discipline. Children, honour your parents, that it may be well with you.

Masters, do not treat your slaves with arrogance, imitating patient Job, who said: “If I despised the cause of my servant or my maidservant when they contended with me, what shall I do if the Lord makes inquiry of me?” and what follows, which you know. Slaves, do not provoke your masters to anger in anything, lest you become the cause of incurable evils to yourselves.

Let no idle person eat, lest he become a vagrant and a frequenter of harlots. … drunkenness, wrath, envy, reviling, clamour, blasphemy: let them not even be named among you. Let the widows not live in wantonness, lest they grow wanton against the Word. Be subject to Caesar in things in which subjection is free of danger. Do not provoke the rulers to anger … against you. As for magic, or pederasty, or murder, it is superfluous to write, since these things are forbidden even to the Gentiles. These things I enjoin not as an apostle, but as your fellow servant …

I greet the holy presbytery. I greet the sacred deacons, and him whose name is dear to me, whom I would see in my place in the Holy Spirit when I attain to Christ; for whom may I be a ransom. … I greet the guardians of the holy gates, the deaconesses in Christ. I greet … Jesus. I greet the people of the Lord, from the least to the greatest, and all my sisters in the Lord. … his … and his dearest children. Polycarp, the most worthy bishop, greets you; he cares for you, and I have commended you to him in the Lord. And the whole church of the Smyrnaeans remembers you in its prayers in the Lord. Onesimus, the shepherd of the Ephesians, greets you. … Polybius of Tralles greets you. … my … greet you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

I write these things to you from Philippi. May he who alone is unbegotten, through him who was begotten before the ages, keep you strong in spirit and flesh; and may I see you in the kingdom of Christ. I greet him who is to rule over you in my place; may I have joy of him in Christ. Farewell in God and in Christ, enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

To Hero, deacon of Antioch. Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to Hero, honoured by God, most dear, Spirit-bearing, a true child in faith and love, deacon of Christ, servant of God: grace, mercy and peace from God Almighty and from Christ Jesus our Lord, his only-begotten Son, “who gave himself for our sins, to deliver us from the present evil age,” and to save us into his heavenly kingdom.

I exhort you in God to press on in your course and to vindicate your dignity. Care for concord with the saints. Bear with the weaker, that you may fulfil the law of Christ. Give yourself to fastings and prayers, but not beyond measure, lest you cast yourself down. Do not abstain altogether from wine and meat, for they are not abominable (“For you shall eat the good things of the land,” he says, and “You shall eat meat as herbs,” and so on), but use them with measure and good order, as God supplies them. For who will eat, or who will drink, without him? For if anything is fair, it is his; and if anything is good … … for they are not abominable: “For you shall eat the good things of the land,” he says; and, “You shall eat meat as herbs”; and, “Wine gladdens the heart of man, and oil makes cheerful, and bread strengthens”; but [use them] with measure and good order, as God supplies them. For who will eat, or who will drink, without him? For if anything is fair, it is his; and if anything is good, it is his. Give heed to reading, that you may not only know the laws yourself but also expound them to others, as God's athlete. “No one serving as a soldier entangles himself in the affairs of life …” “And if anyone competes, he is not crowned unless he competes lawfully.” I, the prisoner, am a ransom for you.

Everyone who speaks contrary to what has been ordained, even if he be trustworthy, even if he fasts, even if he lives in virginity, even if he works signs, even if he prophesies, let him appear to you a wolf … If anyone denies the cross and is ashamed of the passion, let him be to you as the adversary himself. Even if he gives away his goods to feed the poor, even if he moves mountains, even if he gives his body to be burned, let him be abominable to you. If anyone makes light of the law or the prophets, which Christ fulfilled at his coming, let him be to you as Antichrist. If anyone says that the Lord is a mere man, he is a Jew, a Christ-killer.

Honour widows who are widows indeed. Be a protector of orphans; for God is the father of orphans and the judge of widows. Do nothing without the bishops; for they are priests, and you are a deacon of the priests … they lay on hands; but you serve them, as the holy Stephen served James and the presbyters in Jerusalem. Do not neglect the assemblies; seek out all by name. Let no one … become an example to the believers in word, in conduct. [4] Do not be ashamed of slaves; for nature is common to us and to them. Do not abhor women; for they gave you birth and brought you up. One must, then, love the causes of one's birth, but only in the Lord. Without a woman a man will not beget children; one must, then, honour the partners in birth. Neither is man without woman nor woman without man, except in the case of the first-formed. For the body of Adam was made from the four elements, and Eve's from the side of Adam. And the wondrous birth of the Lord was from the Virgin alone; not that lawful intercourse is abominable, but because the birth was such as befitted God. For it was fitting for the Creator not to use the ordinary way of birth but a wondrous and strange one, as Creator.

Flee pride; for [the Lord resists] the proud … “You will destroy,” he says, “all who speak falsehood.” Guard against envy; for its author is the devil, and his successor Cain, who envied his brother and from envy wrought murder. Exhort my sisters to love God and to be content with their own husbands only. … Be long-suffering, that you may be great in understanding. By almsgivings and faithfulness [sins are] … I do not boast in the world but in the Lord … [he who quickly] believes is light of heart. … [7] Remember God, and you will never sin. Do not be double-minded in your prayer; for blessed is he who does not doubt. For I believe in the Father … Add, then, to your course … Christ, the Holy Spirit also being present … the deposit which I and Christ have committed to you; and do not judge yourself unworthy of the things that have been shown … of the Antiochenes. I have commended you to Polycarp in the Lord Jesus Christ. … deacons, of whom may I have joy in Christ, in flesh and spirit. Greet the people of the Lord, from the least to the greatest, by name; whom I commit to you as Moses committed them to Joshua, the general after him. And let what I have said not seem burdensome to you. For even if we are not such as they were, yet we pray to become so, since we too are children of Abraham. Be strong, then, Hero, like a hero and like a man. For from now on you will bring in and lead out the people of the Lord that is in Antioch, and the congregation of the Lord will not be as sheep that have no shepherd.

Greet Cassian, my host, and his most venerable wife, and their dearest children; to whom may God grant to find mercy from the Lord on that day, for their ministry to us; I commend them also to you in Christ. Greet all the faithful in Laodicea by name, in Christ. Do not neglect those in Tarsus, but visit them more frequently, establishing them in the Gospel. I greet in the Lord Maris, the bishop in Neapolis near Anazarbus. Greet also the most venerable Maria, my daughter, the most learned, and the church in her house, for which may I be a ransom: the pattern of godly women. May the Father of Christ, through his only-begotten himself, keep you in health and well approved in all things for a very long span of life, for the benefit of the church of God. Farewell in the Lord, and pray that I …

On baptism. Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the church of God that has obtained mercy in faith and endurance and unfeigned love, which is at Philippi: mercy and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, “who is the Saviour of all people, especially of believers.”

Remembering your love and your zeal in Christ, which you showed toward us, we thought it fitting to write to your brotherly, godly, heartfelt love, to remind you of your course in Christ, that you may all speak the same thing, being of one soul, thinking the one thing, by the same rule … my bonds, that I may be perfected in Christ. [2] … of Christ, from whom are all things; and one also is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of all, through whom are all things; and one also is the Holy Spirit, who worked in Moses and the prophets and the apostles; and one also is the baptism, given into the death of the Lord; and one also is the elect church; and one ought also to be the faith in Christ. For there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, … and through all and in all.”

There is, then, one God and Father, and not two or three; one who is, and there is none besides him, the only true God. For “the Lord your God,” he says, “the Lord is one.” And again: “Did not one God create us? Have we not all one Father?” And one also is the Son, God the Word. For “the only-begotten,” he says, “who is in the bosom of the Father.” And again: “One Lord Jesus Christ.” And elsewhere: “What is his name, or what is the name of his Son, that we may know?” And one also is the Paraclete. For “there is one Spirit,” he says, since we [were called] in one hope of our calling. And again: “We were made to drink of one Spirit,” and what follows. And it is clear that all these gifts are worked by one and the same Spirit. There are not, then, three Fathers, nor three Sons, nor three Paracletes; but one Father, and one Son, and one Paraclete. Therefore the Lord also, when he sent the apostles to make disciples of all nations, commanded them to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; not into one with three names, nor into three who became incarnate, but into three of equal honour. [3] … the Paraclete, but the Son alone; not in appearance, not in imagination, but in truth. For “the Word became flesh” … house. And God the Word was born as a man, with a body, of the Virgin, without intercourse with man. For “the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son.” He was truly born, then, truly grew, truly ate and drank, was truly crucified and died and rose. He who believes these things as they are, as they came to pass, is blessed; he who does not believe them is accursed, no less than those who crucified the Lord. For the ruler of this world rejoices when anyone denies the cross; for he knows that the confession of the cross is his own destruction. For this is the trophy against his power; when he sees it he shudders, and when he hears of it he is afraid. [4] And before the cross came to be, he was eager for it to be brought about, and he worked in the sons of disobedience: he worked in Judas, in the Pharisees, in the Sadducees, in elders, in young men, in priests. But when it was about to come to pass, he is troubled, and puts remorse into the traitor, and shows him a noose and teaches him to hang himself; and he frightens the woman too, troubling her in dreams, and tries to stop what … after the cross, he who had moved every rope for its preparation, not repenting of so great an evil … would not be altogether wicked; but he perceived his own destruction. For the cross of Christ is to him the beginning of condemnation, the beginning of death, the beginning of destruction. Therefore he works in some to deny the cross, to be ashamed of the passion, to call the death a seeming, to cut away the birth from the Virgin, to slander nature itself as abominable. He fights alongside the Jews for the denial of the cross, alongside the Greeks for the slander of sorcery, alongside the heretics for the phantasm. For the general of wickedness is many-coloured, thievish in mind, unstable, contrary to himself, putting forward one thing and showing another. For he is wise to do evil, but what the good is he does not know. For he is full of ignorance through his own wilful folly; for how is he not such, who does not even see the word that lies before his feet? [5] For if the Lord is a mere man, of soul and body only, why do you cut away his birth from the common nature of men? Why do you call the passion a seeming, as if it were something strange to happen to a man? And why do you think the death of a mortal a mere appearance? But if he is God and man, why do you call it unlawful [to speak of] the Lord of glory, who is unchangeable by nature? Why do you call it unlawful [to say] of the Lawgiver, who has a human soul, “The Word became flesh,” and perfect man, not dwelling in a man? How … and intelligible nature by the will of the Father, and in his becoming man … every disease and infirmity. [6] And how is this one not God, who raises the dead, [makes] the lame … gives sight, increases or changes the things that are, the five loaves and the two fishes, and the water into wine, and puts your army to flight with a word alone? And why do you revile the nature of the Virgin, and call her members shameful, you who of old paraded these things in processions and bade men and women strip naked, males before the eyes of females and females to the unbridled desire of males? Now these things are counted shameful by you, and you pretend to be modest, you, the spirit of fornication, not knowing that a thing becomes shameful when it is defiled by lawlessness; but when sin is absent, nothing of what has been made is shameful, nothing base, but all things are very good. And you, not seeing, revile them. [7] And how again does it seem to you that Christ is not from the Virgin, but is the God over all, the Almighty? Tell me, then: who sent him? Who is his lord? By whose will did he obey? Of what laws did he become the fulfiller, if he is subject neither to anyone's will nor to anyone's authority? And while you take Christ away from birth, … the unbegotten … the one without beginning; by whose permission, I cannot say. But you have not escaped me, crafty one; nor am I unaware that you walk in crooked and double ways. But you do not know who was born, you who pretend to know everything. [8] … the wondrous childbirth, who [was] in the body; the star that led those in the east, who brought the gifts; the wondrous conception of a betrothed virgin; the heralding of the forerunner's child at the birth of the one from the Virgin, and the leaping in the womb at him who was foreseen; the hymns of angels at the one born; the good news to the shepherds; Herod's fear at the taking away of his kingdom; the order to kill the infants; the departure to Egypt and the return from there to here; swaddling clothes; the name of a father who did not beget; a manger, because there was no place; no human preparation; growth in stature; human words; hunger, thirst, journeying, weariness; offerings of sacrifices, and then also circumcision, baptism; the voice of God over the one baptized, saying who he is and whence; the testimony of the Spirit and … signifying the passion by the name of Lamb; the working of various signs, manifold healings; rebukes …; evil spirits put to flight; you yourself … but whether it was he himself, you did not know. Therefore you also tempted him, that you might know whether he was able. “If,” you say … “And he departed from him for a season”; that is, he put off the finding out until the resurrection; for he knew that this was the Lord who would rise. So also the demons, since they suspected that Solomon was the Lord, but knew that he was not when he sinned … All the demons knew that he who rose after the passion was the Lord. … tormented, not knowing what you could do.

Seeing these things, you grow dizzy. And that she who gave birth was a virgin … the worship of the magi, the rising of the star. You run back into ignorance because of the lowly things; for small seem to you the swaddling clothes, sufferings, circumcision, nursing with milk; these seemed to you unworthy of God. Again, you saw a man who remained forty days and nights without tasting human food, with angels ministering to him, at whom you shuddered, having first seen him baptized as a common man and not knowing the reason. But after the fast … “If you are the Son of God, say that these stones become loaves.” For the “if you are the Son” is a mark of ignorance. If … to make what is not and to change what is … all who need food; and you tempt the Lord of glory, forgetting in your malice that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” For if you knew that he was the Son of God, you would know that he who for forty days and as many nights made his body free of need could also do this continually. Why, then, does he hunger? To show that he truly took a body of like passions … God; and through the second, that he is also man.

You, then, who fell like lightning from the highest glory, do you dare to say to the Lord, “Throw yourself down from here,” to him to whom the things that are … and do you call to vainglory one who makes no display? And you pretend to know the Scripture about him: “For he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone”; and the rest you pretend not to know, stealing away what he prophesied about you and your attendants: “You will tread on the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon.”

If, then, you are the footstool of the Lord's feet, how do you tempt him who cannot be tempted, forgetting the law … your God? But you even dare, most accursed one, to claim the works of God as your own, and to say that the rule over them has been handed over to you; and you hold out your own fall to the Lord, and promise to give him his own things, if he will fall on the ground and worship you. And how did you not shudder to utter such a word against the Master, O spirit more wicked through malice than all wicked spirits? You were defeated through the belly, and dishonoured through vainglory; through love of money and love of power you are drawn into impiety. You, Belial, the dragon … … who departed, who was separated from Christ, who was estranged from the Holy Spirit, who was thrust out of the choir of angels, the insulter of the laws of God, the enemy of what is lawful, who rose up against the first-formed and drove out from the commandment those who had done you no wrong, who raised up the murderer Cain against Abel, who made war against Job: do you say to the Lord, “If you will fall down and worship me”? O the daring! O the madness! Runaway slave, slave deserving the lash, do you rebel against the good Master? To so great a Master, the God of all things intelligible and sensible, do you say, “If you will fall down and worship me”?

But the Lord is long-suffering, and does not reduce to nothing the one who out of ignorance is so bold, but answers meekly: “Go away, Satan.” He did not say, “Go behind me,” for he cannot turn back; but, “Go away, Satan,” to the things you have chosen; go away to the things to which your malice has stirred you. For I know who I am, and by whom I have been sent, and whom I ought to worship. For “you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” I know the one; I know the only one, from whom you have become an apostate. I am not opposed to God; I confess his pre-eminence; I know the Father, the cause of my begetting.

These things, brothers, out of my affection for you, I have been compelled to write, exhorting you to the glory of God … … not as being someone, but as a brother. Be subject to the bishop, to the presbyters, …

… the church of [Antio]ch, from where I am being led in bonds to Rome. I greet the holy bishop Polycarp; I greet the holy bishop Vitalius, and the sacred presbytery, and my fellow servants the deacons; for whom may I be a ransom. Once more I take leave of the bishop and the presbyters in the Lord. If anyone celebrates the Passover with the Jews, or receives the emblems of their feast, he is a sharer with those who killed the Lord and his apostles. [15] Philo and Agathopus the deacons greet you. I greet the company of virgins and the order of widows; may I have joy of them. I greet the people of the Lord, from the least to the greatest. I have sent you this letter of mine by Euphanius the reader … near Rhegium, as he was setting out by ship. Remember my bonds, that I may be perfected in Christ. Farewell in flesh, soul and spirit, thinking perfect things, turning away from the workers of lawlessness, who are corrupters of the word of truth, being strengthened in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Maria, a proselyte of Jesus Christ, to Ignatius the God-bearer, most blessed bishop of the apostolic church in Antioch, beloved in God the Father and in Jesus: greeting and health. We all pray for your joy and health in him. [1] Since Christ has been wonderfully made known among us to be the Son of the living God, and in the last times … of the seed of David and Abraham, according to the words foretold concerning him through the choir of the prophets; for this reason we beseech you and ask that Maris our companion, bishop of … Neapolis near Zarbus, be sent to us by your wisdom, that we may not be bereft of champions of the divine word. As Moses also says: “Let the Lord God appoint a man who shall lead this people, and the congregation of the Lord shall not be as sheep that have no shepherd.”

As for the youth of those I have mentioned, fear nothing, blessed one. For I want you to know that … shining with grey hair. Recall your thoughts, through the Spirit given you by God through Christ, and you will know that Samuel, while still a little child, was called “the Seer” and was numbered in the choir … [Eli, who] had honoured … above God, the cause of all, and [his sons] who made sport of the priesthood and acted wantonly toward the people. [3] And Daniel the wise, being young, judged … showing certain old men to be wicked, and not elders, and that though Jews by race they were Canaanites by character. And Jeremiah, declining because of his youth the prophecy entrusted to him by God, hears: “Do not say, I am too young; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go; and whatever I command you, you shall speak; for I am with you.” And Solomon the wise, being twelve years old, understood the great question of the women's ignorance concerning their own children, so that the whole people were amazed at the great wisdom of the boy and feared him not as a youth but as a grown man. And the riddles of the queen of the Ethiopians, which poured out like the streams of the Nile, he so solved that she who was so wise was beside herself …

And Josiah, the friend of God, while still scarcely uttering articulate sounds, convicts those [possessed] by the evil spirit … and exposes the deceit of the demons, and makes an example of the gods that are not; and those who were priests to them he slaughters, though a child; and he overturns their altars, and defiles the altars with dead men's bones, and pulls down the sacred precincts, and cuts down the groves, and breaks the pillars, and digs up the tombs of the ungodly, so that no trace of the wicked might remain. So zealous was he for godliness, and an avenger of the ungodly, while still lisping with his tongue. David, at once prophet and king, the root of the Saviour according to the flesh, is anointed king by Samuel while a youth. For he says somewhere himself: “I was small among my brothers, and the youngest in my father's house.” [5] Time would fail me if I wished to trace out all who pleased God in youth and were entrusted by God with prophecy, priesthood and kingship. But what has been said suffices for a reminder. But I beseech you, let me not seem to you superfluous and forward. For I set these words before you not to teach you but to remind my father in God. For I know my own measure, and I do not stretch myself out to equal such as you. I greet your holy clergy and your Christ-loving people, shepherded under your care. All the faithful with us greet you. Pray that I may be in health according to God, blessed shepherd.

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to her who has obtained mercy by the grace of God the most high Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us, the most faithful … : abundant greeting in God.

Sight is better than a letter, inasmuch as, being one of the chorus of the senses, it not only honours the recipient by what it imparts in friendship, but by what it receives in return enriches the longing for better things. Yet a letter too is, as they say, a second harbour; and such a good anchorage we have received from your faith far off, as though we knew of ourselves the good that is in you. For the souls of the good, most wise lady, are like the purest springs. For these [draw] the passers-by, even if they are not … And your understanding invites us, bidding us share in what wells up in your soul …

But I, blessed lady, am not now my own, … having become another's, I am driven by the many judgments of my opponents: now by banishments, now by imprisonments, now by chains. But I turn back from none of these. But by their wrongs I am the more … of the terrors prepared for me; since the sufferings of the present time are not worthy [to be compared] with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

What you commanded in your letter I have gladly fulfilled, doubting in nothing what you yourself judged to be good. For I knew that you gave your testimony to the two men by the judgment of God, and not from fleshly favour. And your frequent recollections of passages of Scripture also [moved] me greatly; having read them, I did not hesitate about the matter even in thought. For I had no eyes with which to run away from things of which you had given an incontestable demonstration. May I be a ransom for you, because you love Jesus [the Son] of the living God. Therefore he himself will say to you: “I love those who love me; and those who seek me will find peace.” [4] It occurs to me to say that the report I heard of you was true, while you were still in Rome with the blessed Pope Linus, whom … has now succeeded … And now you have added to it a hundredfold; and may you add yet more, lady. I greatly desired to come to you, to be refreshed together with you; but “a man's way is not in himself.” For the military guard checks my purpose, not allowing me to reach the end. In my present state I am able neither to do nor to suffer anything. Therefore, reckoning a letter as the second consolation among friends, I embrace your holy soul, exhorting you to add to your effort. For the present toil is small, but the reward expected is great.

Flee those who deny the passion of Christ and his birth according to the flesh; and many there are now who suffer from this sickness. But to exhort you in other things is foolish, since you are perfected in every good work and word, and able to admonish others in Christ. Greet all who are like you, who hold fast to their own salvation in Christ. The presbyters and the deacons greet you, and above all the holy Hero. Cassian my host greets you, and my sister his wife, and their dearest children. May the Lord sanctify you, always in good health of body and spirit; and may I see you in Christ attaining the crown.