Digital Logos Edition
Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume VII: S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. Gregory Nazianzen. The Early Church Fathers is one of the most important collections of historical, philosophical and theological writings available in English to the student of the Christian Church. These documents provide the most comprehensive witness to the development of Christianity and Christian thought during the period immediately following the Apostolic Era. The Catholic edition of Early Church Fathers does not include the introductions, prolegomenae, and various interpretive comments made by the protestant editors of the Edinburgh edition. However, it retains all of the footnotes found in the printed editions. Contents of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series VII Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lectures Five Catechetical Lectures to the Newly Baptized Gregory Nazianzen Orations Letters
“I was ashamed of all those others, who, without being better than ordinary people, nay, it is a great thing if they be not worse, with unwashen hands,3 as the saying runs, and uninitiated souls, intrude into the most sacred offices; and, before becoming worthy to approach the temples, they lay claim to the sanctuary,4 and they push and thrust around the holy table, as if they thought this order to be a means of livelihood, instead of a pattern of virtue, or an absolute authority, instead of a ministry of which we must give account.” (Page 206)
“I did not, nor do I now, think myself qualified to rule a flock or herd, or to have authority over the souls of men.” (Page 207)
“Now he is least of the apostles,24 now he offers a proof of Christ speaking in him;25 now he longs for departure and is being poured forth as a libation,26 now he thinks it more necessary for their sakes to abide in the flesh. For he seeks not his own interests, but those of his children,27 whom he has begotten in Christ by the gospel.28 This is the aim of all his spiritual authority, in everything to neglect his own in comparison with the advantage of others.” (Page 216)
“The Former is called God, and subsists in Three Greatest, namely, the Cause, the Creator, and the Perfecter; I mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who are neither so separated from one another as to be divided in nature, nor so contracted as to be circumscribed by a single person; the one alternative being that of the Arian madness, the other that of the Sabellian heresy; but they are on the one hand more single than what is altogether divided, and on the other more abundant than what is altogether singular.” (Page 336)