"Take heed, my children, that your dissensions deprive you not of your lives. How will ye instruct the elect of God, when ye yourselves want correction? Wherefore admonish one another, and be at peace among yourselves; that I, standing before your father, may give an account of you unto the Lord."[512:6]
Ignatius, in his Epistle to the Smyrnæans, says:[512:7]
"Only in the name of Jesus Christ, I undergo all, to suffer together with him; he who was made a perfect man strengthening me. Whom some, not knowing, do deny; or rather have been denied by him, being the advocates of death, rather than of the truth. Whom neither the prophecies, nor the law of Moses, have persuaded; nor the Gospel itself even to this day, nor the sufferings of any one of us. For they think also the same thing of us; for what does a man profit me, if he shall praise me, and blaspheme my Lord; not confessing that he was truly made man?"
In his Epistle to the Philadelphians he says:[513:1]
"I have heard of some who say, unless I find it written in the originals, I will not believe it to be written in the Gospel. And when I said, It is written, they answered what lay before them in their corrupted copies."
Polycarp, in his Epistle to the Philippians, says:[513:2]
"Whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, he is Antichrist: and whosoever does not confess his sufferings upon the cross, is from the devil. And whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts; and says that there shall neither be any resurrection, nor judgment, he is the first-born of Satan."
Ignatius says to the Magnesians:[513:3]
"Be not deceived with strange doctrines; nor with old fables which are unprofitable. For if we still continue to live according to the Jewish law, we do confess ourselves not to have received grace. For even the most holy prophets lived according to Jesus Christ. . . . Wherefore if they who were brought up in these ancient laws came nevertheless to the newness of hope; no longer observing Sabbaths, but keeping the Lord's Day, in which also our life is sprung up by him, and through his death, whom yet some deny. By which mystery we have been brought to believe, and therefore wait that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only master. . . . . These things, my beloved, I write unto you, not that I know of any among you that be under this error; but as one of the least among you, I am desirous to forewarn you that ye fall not into the snares of vain doctrine."
After reading this we can say with the writer of Timothy,[513:4] "Without controversy, great is the MYSTERY of godliness."