SEPERATION FROM WORLD

This world and the next are two enemies ... We cannot therefore be the friends of both. (Second Clement, 7.518 - 150ad)

He continues, "You know that you who are the servants of God dwell in a strange land.  For your city is far away from this one.  If, then, you know your city in which you are to dwell, why do you here provide lands, and make expensive preparations, and accumulate dwellings and useless buildings?  He who makes such preparations for this city cannot return again to his own ... Do you not understand that all these things belong to another, and are under the power of another? ... Take note, therefore.  As one living in a foreign land, make no further preparations for yourself than what is merely sufficient.  And be ready to leave this city, when the master of this city will come to cast you out for disobeying his law. (Hermas, 2.31 - 150ad)

Refrain from much business, and you will never sin, for those who are occupied with much business commit also many sins.  For they are distracted about their affairs, and they are not serving their Lord at all. (Hermas, 2.33 - 150ad)

Your (pagan) public assemblies I have come to hate.  For there are excessive banqueting, subtle flutes that provoke people to lustful movements, useless and luxurious anointings, and crownings with garlands. (Justin Martyr, 1.272 - 160ad)

I do not wish to be a king.  I am not anxious to be rich.  I decline military command.  I detest fornication.  I am not impelled by an insatiable love of gain to go to sea.  I do not contend for chaplets.  I am free from a mad thirst for fame.  I despise death.  I am superior to every kind of disease.  Grief does not consume my soul.  If I am a slave, I endure servitude.  If I am free, I do not boast about my good birth ... Die to the world, repudiating the madness that is in it!  Live to God! (Tatian, 2.69 - 160ad)

If you are superior to the passions, you will scorn all worldly things. (Tatian, 2.73 - 160ad)

Christ has not merely related to us a story about a poor man and a rich one.  Rather, He has taught us some things: In the first place, He has taught that no one should lead a luxurious life.  No one should live in worldly pleasures and perpetual feasting.  No one should be the slave to his lusts and forget God. (Irenaeus, 1.464 - 180ad)

We have no country on earth.  Therefore, we can disdain earthly possessions. (Clement of Alexandria, 2.281 - 195ad)

If you would loose, withdraw, and seperate your soul from the delight and pleasure that is in this life (for this is what the cross means), you will possess it.  It will be found resting in the looked-for hope. (Clement of Alexandria, 2.371 - 195ad)

"God stood in the congregation of the gods; he judges in the midst of the gods."  Who are these "gods"?  They are those who are superior to pleasure, who rise above the passions ... It is those who are greater than the world. (Clement of Alexandria, 2.374 - 195ad)

On the day of gladness (ie. a pagan festival), why do we neither cover our door-posts with laurels, nor intrude upon the day with lamps?  Is it a proper thing, at the call of public festivity, to dress your house up like some new brothel? ... We do not celebrate along with you the holidays of the Caesars in a manner forbidden alike by modesty, decency, and purity. (Tertullian, 3.44 - 197ad)

(Addressed to pagans) All zeal in the pursuit of glory and honor is dead in us.  So we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings.  Nor is there anything more entirely foreign to us than the affairs of state.  We acknowledge one all-embracing commonwealth - the world.  We renounce all your spectacles ... Among us, nothing is ever said, seen, or heard that has anything in common with the madness of the circus, the immodesty of the theater, the atrocities of the arena, or the useless exercise of the wrestling ground.  Why do you take offense at us because we differ from you in regard to your pleasures? (Tertullian, 3.46 - 197ad)

The following quotation was written to Christians who had been imprisoned because of their faith:
Let us compare the life of the world and of the prison - and see if the spirit does not gain more in the prison than the flesh loses ... In prison, you have no occasion to look on strange gods; you do not bump into their images.  You have no part in pagan holidays, even by mere bodily mingling in them.  You are not annoyed by the foul fumes of idolatrous solemnities.  You are not painedby the noise of the public shows, nor by the atrocity, madness, or immodesty of their celebrants ... The prison does the same service for the Christian that the desert did for the prophet. (Tertullian, 3.694 - 197ad)

Moreover, what causes have you for appearing in public in excessive grandeur?  After all, you are removed from the occasions that call for such exhibitions.  For you neither make the circuit of temples, nor demand to be present at public shows.  Furthermore, you have no acquaintance with the festivals of the Gentiles.  Now, it is for the sake of all these public gatherings - and of much seeing and being seen - that all ceremonies are exhibited before the public eye ... You, however, have no cause for appearing in public, except such as is serious.  Either some brother who is sick is visited, or else the sacrifice is offered, or else the Word of God is dispensed. (Tertullian, 4.24 - 198ad)

So long as you deem yourself a Christian, you are a different man from a pagan.  Give him back his own views of things!  After all, he does not himself learn from your views.  Why lean upon a blind guide, if you have eyes of your own?  Why be clothed by one who is naked, if you have put on Christ? (Tertullian, 3.547 - 210ad)

Are you are a foreigner in this world, a citizen of Jerusalem, the city above.  Our citizenship, the apostle says, is in heaven.  You have your own registrars, your own calendar.  You have nothing to do with the joys of this world.  In fact, you are called to the very opposite - for "the world will rejoice, but you will mourn." (Tertullian, 3.101 - 212ad)

It is not possible for anyone to enter into the kindom of heaven who has not been turned away from the affairs of this world and made like the little children who possess the Holy Spirit. (Origen, 9.485 - 245ad)

The one peaceful and trustworthy tranquility, the one solid, firm, and constant security is this: for a man to withdraw form this whirlpool of a distracting world and to lift his eyes from earth to heave, anchored on the ground of the harbor of salvation ... He who is actually greater than the world can crave nothing or desire nothing from the world.  How stable, how free from all shocks is that safeguard.  How heavenly ... to be loosed from the snares of this entangling world and to be purged from earthly dregs and be fitted for the light of eternal immortality. (Cyprian, 5.279 - 250ad)

Whatever things are earthly and have been received in this world (and will remain here with the world) should be scorned, even as the world itself is scorned.  For we have already renounced its ceremonies and delights when we came to God through a blessed passage (ie. baptism).  John stimulates and exhorts us ... He says, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." (Cyprian, 5.432 - 250ad)

We should ever and a day reflect that we have renounced the world and are in the meantime living here as geusts and strangers. (Cyprian, 5.475 - 250ad)

He who has attained to trust, having put off the former man, should reflect on only heavenly and spiritual things.  He should give no heed to the world that he has already renounced. (Cyprian, 5.535 - 250ad)

Of this same thing, it is written in Matthew: ..." He who does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple." ... "The time is limited.  It remains, therefore, that those who have wives be as though they do not have them." ... Of this very matter, he wrote to the Galatians: "But be it far from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me." ... Of the same thing in the Epistle of Peter: "As strangers and pilgrims, abstain from carnal lusts, which war against the soul." ... Of the same thing in the Epistle of John: ... "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." (Cyprian, 5.536 - 250ad)

We must not join in their feasts, which are celebrated in honor of demons, being partakers of them in their impiety.  You are also to avoid their public meetings and those sports that are celebrated in them. (Apostolic Constitutions, 7.424 - compiled 390ad)