Skip to main content

section

Chapter VII.—Avoid the Docetæ, and persevere in fasting and prayer.

← Back to edition
iv.ii.vii184 words

Chapter VII.—Avoid the Docetæ, and persevere in fasting and prayer.

“For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist;”377 and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross,378 is of the devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the first-born of Satan.379 Wherefore, forsaking the vanity of many, and their false doctrines, let us return to the word which has been handed down to us from380 the beginning; “watching unto prayer,”381 and persevering in fasting; beseeching in our supplications the all-seeing God “not to lead us into temptation,”382 as the Lord has said: “The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.”383

Footnotes

  1. 377

    1 John iv. 3.

  2. 378

    Literally, “the martyrdom of the cross,” which some render, “His suffering on the cross.”

  3. 379

    [The original, perhaps, of Eusebius (Hist. iv. cap. 14). It became a common-place expression in the Church.]

  4. 380

    Comp. Jude 3.

  5. 381

    1 Pet. iv. 7.

  6. 382

    Matt. vi. 13; Matt. xxvi. 41.

  7. 383

    Matt. xxvi. 41; Mark xiv. 38.