RECORDS OF THE CHURCH.
No. II.
THE HOLY CHURCH THROUGHOUT ALL THE WORLD DOTH ACKNOWLEDGE THEE.
Epistle of Ignatius, the friend of St. Peter, on his way to Martyrdom, to the Magnesians.
Ignatius, which is also Theophorus, to the Church that is in Magnesia, nigh to Mæander, the blessed of God the Father through Jesus Christ our Saviour: in whom I salute it, and pray that it may have all joy, in God the Father and Jesus Christ.
I. Being aware how righteously ordered is your love and charity in God, the gladness which I feel has induced me to address you in the spirit of Jesus Christ. For, admitted as I am to the noblest of titles in the bonds which I bear about me, I make my song to the Churches, praying that they may possess a union of the Flesh and Spirit of Jesus Christ, (who is our life evermore,) and of Faith, and Charity which surpasseth all things, and, more than these, of Jesus and of the Father, through whom, when we have endured all assaults from the prince of this world, after we have escaped, we shall be with God.
II. Seeing now it is my privilege to behold you, through Damas your most holy Bishop, and your worthy Presbyters, Bassus and Apollonius, and your Deacon my fellow-labourer Sotion, toward whom I am tenderly affectioned, because he is subject to his Bishop as to a gracious gift from God, and to the Presbytery as to an institution of Jesus Christ, I determined to write unto you.
III. Your duty likewise is it, not to bear yourselves toward your Bishop with a freedom proportioned to his youth, but according to the power of God the Father, to concede to him all homage. As I am aware the holy Presbyters do, you take no occasion from his apparent youthfulness for the station, but as men wise in a godly wisdom submit themselves to him; yet not to him, but to the Father
