Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Early Christian Quotes on Death and Dying

Early Christian Quotes on Death and Dying



 Fragments of Irenaeus

(Late 2nd Century)

Paragraph 11:

 

The job of the Christian is nothing more than to be constantly preparing for death.

 

 

Sentences of Sextus

(Early 3rd Century)

Selections:

 

(321) Do not become guilty of your own death. Do not be angry at him who will take you out of the body and kill you.

 

(322) If someone brings the wise man out of the body forcefully, he does him a favor because he has been released from his jail.

 

(345) It is better to die than to pollute the soul because of the ravenous wants of the belly.

 

(364) If a tyrant threatens you, then, especially, remember God.

 

 

Clement of Alexandria’s Miscellanies

(Early 3rd Century)

Book 4, Chapter 11, Paragraphs 1, 3:

 

Some say, “If God cares for you, why are you persecuted and put to death? Has He delivered you to this?” No, we do not believe that the Lord wishes disasters like that on us but that He foretold prophetically what would happen -- that we would be persecuted for His name's sake, slaughtered, and impaled. So that it was not that He wanted us to be persecuted, but He told beforehand what we will suffer, training us to endurance to be able to claim our inheritance…

 

They ask, “But why doesn’t He help you when you are persecuted?” What wrong is done us in being released by death to go to the Lord? If we were thinking about it correctly, we would feel obliged to thank those who are giving us a speedy departure from this life.

 

 

Cyprian’s On the Mortality

(Mid-3rd Century)

Paragraph 18:

 

How preposterous and absurd it is that while we ask that the will of God should be done, yet when God calls and summons us from this world, we should not at once obey the command of His will! We struggle and resist, and like argumentative servants, we are dragged to the presence of the Lord with sadness and grief, departing this life only because we have to, not with the obedience of free will; and we want to be honored with heavenly rewards by Him to whom we come unwillingly. Why, then, do we pray and ask that the kingdom of heaven may come if the captivity of earth delights us?

 


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Find more of what the early Christians thought on my Christian History page!




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