| | A.D. 182-202 [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/clement.html Clement of Alexandria (earlychristianwritings.com)] —..."set thyself earnestly to find Christ. 'For I am,' He says, 'the door,' which we who desire to understand God must discover, that He may throw heaven's gates wide open to. us. For the gates of the Word being intellectual, are opened by the key of faith. No one knows God but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him. And I know well that He who has opened the door hitherto shut, will afterwards reveal what is within; and will show what we could not have known before, had we not entered in by Christ, through whom alone God is beheld." —Exhortation to the Heathen | | A.D. 182-202 [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/clement.html Clement of Alexandria (earlychristianwritings.com)] —..."set thyself earnestly to find Christ. 'For I am,' He says, 'the door,' which we who desire to understand God must discover, that He may throw heaven's gates wide open to. us. For the gates of the Word being intellectual, are opened by the key of faith. No one knows God but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him. And I know well that He who has opened the door hitherto shut, will afterwards reveal what is within; and will show what we could not have known before, had we not entered in by Christ, through whom alone God is beheld." —Exhortation to the Heathen |
| − | A.D. 197-220 [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/tertullian.htm. Tertullian (earlychristianwritings.com)] —"ONE proof of that ignorance of yours, which condemns whilst it excuses your injustice, is at once apparent in the fact, that all who once shared in your ignorance and hatred (of the Christian religion), as soon as they have come to know it, leave off their hatred when they cease to be ignorant; nay more, they actually themselves become what they had hated, and take to hating what they had once been." —Ad nationes | + | A.D. 197-220 [http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/tertullian.html. Tertullian (earlychristianwritings.com)] —"ONE proof of that ignorance of yours, which condemns whilst it excuses your injustice, is at once apparent in the fact, that all who once shared in your ignorance and hatred (of the Christian religion), as soon as they have come to know it, leave off their hatred when they cease to be ignorant; nay more, they actually themselves become what they had hated, and take to hating what they had once been." —Ad nationes |