Epistles

Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius of Antioch. The Apostolic Fathers, Volume 1. Lake, Kirsopp, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1912.

truly nailed to a tree [*](Tree is not expressed in the Greek: but seems to be implied by the fruit in the next sentence, though the exact meaning of the passage is obscure.) in the flesh tor our sakes under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch, (and of its fruit are we from his divinely blessed Passion) that he might set up an ensign for all ages through his Resurrection, for his saints and believers, whether among the Jews, or among the heathen, in one body of his Church.

For he suffered all these things for us that we[*](Against Docetism) might attain salvation, and he truly suffered even as he also truly raised himself, not as some unbelievers

say, that his Passion was merely in semblance,—but it is they who are merely in semblance, and even according to their opinions it shall happen to them, and they shall be without bodies and phantasmal.