Library › St Ignatius of Antioch › To the Romans
To the Romans
St Ignatius of Antioch, Lake, Loeb 1912
Chapter 3
Request that they should pray for him
You never have envied anyone, you taught others. But I desire that those things may stand fast which you enjoin in your instructions.
Only pray for me for strength, both inward and outward, that I may not merely speak, but also have the will, that I may not only be called a Christian, but may also be found to be one. For if I be found to be one, I can also be called one, and then be deemed faithful when I no longer am visible in the world.
Nothing visible is good, for our God, Jesus Christ, being now in the Father, is the more plainly visible.1 Christianity is not the work of persuasiveness, but of greatness, when it is hated by the world.
Notes
- The sentence is clumsily expressed: apparently Ignatius means “nothing directly visible is good, and Jesus Christ, who is no longer visible, being in the Father, is more clearly perceived by the eye of faith,” but he has sacrificed clearness to a paradoxical playing with the words.