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Posts: 85958
Dec 14 06 8:30 PM
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Quote: Ignatius was bishop of Antioch in this century, after the first bishop of that place Evodius, and was early in it, if any truth in these reports that he was the child Christ took in his arms, when he rebuked his disciples; and that he saw Christ after his resurrection; but though these are things not to be depended on, yet it is certain that he lived in the latter end of the first century, and suffered martyrdom in the beginning of the second. Several epistles of his are extant, in which, as well as by words, he exhorted the saints to beware of heresies then springing up among them, and abounding, as Eusebius observes;16 meaning the heresies of Ebion arid Cerinthus about the person of Christ: and says many things which shew his belief, and what was their error. In one of his epistles17 he exhorts to decline from some persons, as beasts, as ravenous dogs, biting secretly, and difficult of cure; and adds, "there is one physician, carnal and spiritual, begotten and unbegotten. God made flesh, in a true and immortal life, who is both of Mary and of God." In a larger epistle to the same,18 thought by some to be interpolated, though it expresses the same sentiment; "our physician is alone the true God, the unbegotten and invisible Lord of all, the Father and begetter of the only begotten one; we have also a physician, or Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son before the world, and the word, and at last man of the virgin Mary;" and afterwards in the same19 epistle still more expressly, "the Son of God, who was begotten before the world was, and constitutes all things according to the will of the Father, he was bore in the womb by Mary, according to the dispensation of God, of the seed of David by the Holy Ghost." And a little farther,20
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