Commodian
3rd century · AD 250 · Early Fathers (before Nicaea) · 8 passages
In his own words on Jeremiah
- Jeremiah 8:11
The arranged time comes to our people; there is peace in the world; and, at the same time, ruin is weighing us down from the enticement of the world, (the destruction) of the reckless people whom you have rent into schism. Either obey the law of the city, or depart from it. You behold the mote sticking in our eyes, and will not see the beam in your own. A treacherous peace is coming to you; persecution is rife; the wounds do not appear; and thus, without slaughter, you are destroyed. War is waged in secret, because, in the midst of peace itself, scarcely one of you has behaved himself with caution. O badly fortified, and foretold for slaughter, you praise a treacherous peace, a peace that is mischievous to you. Having become the soldiers of another than Christ, you have perished.
On Christian Discipline, LXVI
Quoted verbatim from public-domain English translations of the fathers — Aquinas's Catena Aurea, the Ante-Nicene and Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers, and related editions. Each quotation links to its source.