Today is the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr. From his Epistle to the Trallians (Chapters 6-11):
I therefore exhort you, yet not I but the love of Jesus Christ, to use the Christian food alone, and to abstain from all strange herbage, which is heresy; the time that now is embraces Jesus Christ, not the devil. Do ye therefore, having again put on patience, refresh yourselves in faith, which is the flesh of the Lord, and love, which is the blood of Jesus Christ. Guard yourselves, therefore, against such as these. And this will happen unto you if ye be not puffed up, and separate not from our God Jesus Christ, and the bishop, and the commandments of the Apostles. He who is within the altar is pure; that is, he who doeth anything apart from the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons, he is not pure in his conscience. It is not because I have known anything of the kind in you, but I put you on your guard beforehand because ye are my beloved, foreseeing the snares of the devil. Do ye therefore, having again put on patience, refresh yourselves in faith, which is the flesh of the Lord, and love, which is the blood of Jesus Christ. Let none of you have aught against his neighbour; give no opportunities to the Gentiles, that the multitude which is in God may not be blasphemed for the folly of a few. For woe unto him, through whose foolishness my name among certain men is blasphemed. Be ye deaf, therefore, when any one speaketh unto you apart from Jesus Christ, who is of the race of David, who was born of Mary, who was truly born, ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died, in the sight of the things that are in heaven and on earth and under the earth; and was truly raised from the dead, his Father having raised him up; according to the similitude of which also his Father shall raise up us who believe in him in Christ Jesus, apart from whom we have not the true life. But if, as certain men who are without God, that is unbelievers, assert, his passion was an appearance, being themselves an appearance, why am I bound, and why do I pray to fight with wild beasts? therefore I die in vain. Of a truth, do I not lie against the Lord? Avoid therefore the evil branches that produce deadly fruit, of which if any man taste he dieth forthwith. These, therefore, are not the planting of the Father, for if they were they would appear branches of the cross, and their fruit would have been incorruptible, through which cross in his passion he exhorteth us who are his members. The head, therefore, cannot be born apart without the members, since God promiseth union, which is himself.
