Epistles

For if I in a short time gained such fellowship[*](The necessity of subordination to the bishop) with your bishop as was not human but spiritual, how much more do I count you blessed who are so united with him as the Church is with Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is with the Father, that all things may sound together in unison!

Let no man be deceived: unless a man be within the sanctuary he lacks the bread of God, for if the prayer of one or two has such might, how much more has that of the bishop and of the whole Church?

So then he who does not join in the common assembly, is already haughty, and has separated himself.[*](There is a curious mixture of tenses in the Greek: Lightfoot takes the final aorist as gnomic: but it is possible that Ignatius is, at least in part, referring to some special instance.) For it is written God resisteth the proud: let us then be careful not to oppose the bishop, that we may be subject to God.[*](Or, with the alternative reading, by our submission we may belong to God.)