Justin Martyr Quotes

We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.

Let it be understood that those who are not found living as He taught are not Christian- even though they profess with the lips the teaching of Christ.

The world suffers nothing from Christians but hates them because they reject its pleasures.

We pray for our enemies; we seek to persuade those who hate us without cause to live conformably to the goodly precepts of Christ, that they may become partakers with us of the joyful hope of blessings from God, the Lord of all.

By examining the tongue of the patient, physicians find out the diseases of the body, and philosophers the diseases of the mind.

No one who is rightly minded turns from true belief to false.

We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools...now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us through the Crucified One....The more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers.

Not as common bread or as common drink do we receive these.....We have been taught that the food that has been Eucharistized by the word of prayer, that food which by assimilation nourishes our flesh and blood, is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.

We who formerly hated and murdered one another now live together and share the same table. We pray for our enemies and try to win those who hate us.

For I choose to follow not men or men's doctrines, but God and the doctrines [delivered] by Him. For if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this [truth], and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians

And this food is called among us the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins and to regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.

If some should accuse us as if we held that people born before the time of Christ were not accountable to God for their actions, we shall anticipate and answer such a difficulty. We have been taught that Christ is the first-begotten of God, and we have declared him to be the Logos of which all mankind partakes. Those, therefore, who lived according to reason (logos) were really Christians, even though they were thought to be atheists, such as, among the Greeks, Socrates, Heraclitus and others like them.

Sound doctrine does not enter into the hard and disobedient heart; but, as if beaten back, enters anew into itself.

When we say that Jesus Christ was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whom you call the sons of Jupiter.

... it is better to believe even what is impossible to our own nature and to men, than to be unbelieving like the rest of the world, we have learned; for we know that our Master Jesus Christ said, that 'what is impossible with men is possible with God' (Mt. 19:26)?

God called Abraham and commanded him to go out from the country where he was living. With this call God has roused us all, and now we have left the state. We have renounced all the things the world offers.... The gods of the nations are demons.

We expect to receive again our own bodies, though they be dead and cast into the earth, for we maintain that with God nothing is impossible.

If you are eagerly looking for salvation, and if you believe in God, you may ... become acquainted with the Christ of God, and, after being initiated [a reference to baptism], live a happy life.

But I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged, [as] the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare.

Because of this basin of repentance and knowledge of God, which has been ordained for the transgression of God's people, as Isaiah cries, we have believed, and we testify that the very baptism which he announced is alone able to purify those who have repented. It is the water of life. But the cisterns which you have dug for yourselves are broken and of no benefit to you. For what is the use of a baptism which cleanses the flesh and body alone? Baptize the soul from wrath and from covetousness, from envy, and from hatred, and, lo, the body is pure.

Now bring what we have into common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different tribe, now since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to persuade those who hate us unjustly, to the end that they may become partakers of the same joyful hope of a reward from God the ruler of all.

We have strayed from the Immortal's ways And worship with a dull and senseless mind Idols, the workmanship of our own hands, And images and figures of dead men.

But if so great a power is shown to have followed and to be still following the dispensation of His suffering, how great shall that be which shall follow His glorious advent! For He shall come on the clouds as the Son of man, so Daniel foretold, and His angels shall come with Him.

And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus.

In that we say he [Christ] made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Esculapius.