Page:Ante-Nicene Fathers volume 1.djvu/239

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TO THE PHILIDELPHIANS.
225
[the Scripture], "Thine eye shall not spare him."[1] You ought therefore to "hate those that hate God, and to waste away [with grief] on account of His enemies."[2] I do not mean that you should beat them or persecute them, as do the Gentiles "that know not the Lord and God;"[3] but that you should regard them as your enemies, and separate yourselves from them, while yet you admonish them, and exhort them to repentance, if it may be they will hear, if it may be they will submit themselves. For our God is a lover of mankind, and "will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth."[4] Wherefore "He makes His sun to rise upon the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust;"[5] of whose kindness the Lord, wishing us also to be imitators, says, "Be ye perfect, even as also your Father that is in heaven is perfect."[6]


Chap. iv.Have but one Eucharist, etc.

Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth[7]] the unity

I have confidence of you in the Lord, that ye will be of no other mind. Wherefore I write boldly to your love, which is worthy of God, and exhort you to have but one faith, and one [kind of] preach-
  1. Deut. xiii. 6, 8.
  2. Ps. cxix. 21.
  3. 1 Thess. iv. 5.
  4. 1 Tim. ii. 4.
  5. Matt. v. 45.
  6. Matt. v. 48.
  7. Literally, "into."
VOL. I.
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