Epistles

Nothing visible is good, for our God, Jesus Christ, being now in the Father, is the more plainly visible.[*](The sentence is clumsily expressed: apparently Ignatius means nothing directly visible is good, and Jesus Christ, who is no longer visible, being in the Father, is more clearly perceived by the eye of faith, but he has sacrificed clearness to a paradoxical playing with the words.) Christianity is not the work of persuasiveness, but of greatness, when it is hated by the world.

I am writing to all the Churches, and I give[*](His desire to suffer) injunctions to all men, that I am dying willingly for God’s sake, if you do not hinder it. I beseech you, be not an unseasonable kindness [*](Apparently a partial quotation from the proverb preserved by Zenobius ἄκαιρος εὔνοι’ οὐδὲν ἔχθρας διαφέρει an unseasonable kindness is nothing different from hostility.) to me. Suffer me to be eaten by tlie beasts, through whom I can attain to God. I am God’s wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread of Christ.