9 Inspirational Quotes from the Early Church

In January, we announced 1,500 Quotations for Preachers, a five-volume series of quotations from throughout church history. These quotations are extremely helpful in putting together sermons, and can easily be pulled into presentations with the provided quotation slides.

Here are nine inspiring quotes from the Early Church volume:

1. Tertullian on persecution

“The more often we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.”

2. Jerome on Scripture reading and prayer:

“Let the divine scripture be always in your hands, and give yourself so frequently to prayer that such shafts of evil thoughts as ever assail the young may thereby find a shield to repel them.”

3. Augustine on procrastination

“God has promised pardon to your conversion; He has not promised a tomorrow to your delay.”

4. Chrysostom on reconciliation

“We are commanded to have only one enemy, the devil. With him never be reconciled! But with a brother, never be at enmity in your heart.”

5. Athanasius on the renewal of creation

“The renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning.”

6. Cyril of Jerusalem on God’s mercy

“Your accumulated offenses do not surpass the multitude of God’s mercies; your wounds do not surpass the great physician’s skill.”

7. Gregory of Nazianzus on God’s greatness

“No one has yet breathed the whole air, nor has any mind entirely comprehended, or speech exhaustively contained, the being of God.”

8. Syncletica of Alexandria on the integrity of teachers

“A man whose house is about to fall down may invite travelers inside to refresh them, but instead they are hurt in the collapse of the house. It is the same with teachers who have not carefully trained themselves in the good life: they ruin their hearers as well as themselves.”

9. Irenaeus on truth and error

“Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.”

Be sure to pick up 1,500 Quotations for Preachers.