Fragments Quoted by Later Writers

These are pieces of Justin that no longer survive in any book of his own. Each one was quoted by a later writer, and the writer who preserved it is named at the end of the piece.

The most admirable Justin rightly said that the demons just described are like robbers. — Tatian, Address to the Greeks 18 [b]

Justin put it well in his book against Marcion: he would not have believed the Lord himself if the Lord had announced any God other than the one who fashioned and made the world and who feeds us. But since it is from the one God — who both made this world and formed us, and who holds all things together as well as governs them — that his only Son came to us, gathering up his own handiwork into himself, my faith in him is firm and my love for the Father cannot be shaken. God gives us both. — Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.6 [c]

Justin put it well: before the Lord’s coming, Satan never dared to speak against God, since he was not yet certain of his own sentence — the prophets had announced it about him only in parables and figures. But after the Lord came, and Satan learned plainly from the words of Christ and his apostles that eternal fire was prepared for anyone who leaves God of his own will, and for all who go on in revolt without repentance, then, as one already condemned, he uses a man of that sort to speak against the God who passes judgment on him. He lays the sin of his own revolt on his Maker instead of on his own will and choice. — Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.26 [d]

Explaining why the devil plots against us without stopping, he says: before the Lord’s coming, the devil did not clearly know the measure of his own punishment, since the prophets of God had announced it only in riddles — Isaiah, for one, who spoke of the Assyrian and under that figure revealed, as in a tragedy, the course to be taken against the devil. But when the Lord appeared, and the devil understood plainly that eternal fire was stored up and made ready for him and his angels, he began to plot against the faithful without stopping. He wanted many companions in his revolt, so that he would not have to bear the shame of his condemnation by himself — comforting himself with that cold and spiteful comfort. — From the writings of John of Antioch [e]

Justin of Neapolis, a man not far removed from the apostles either in time or in worth, says that what is mortal is inherited but what is immortal inherits, and that the flesh dies while the kingdom of heaven lives. — Methodius, On the Resurrection, as reported by Photius [f]

There is nothing cramped in God, and nothing in him that is not perfect through and through. — From a manuscript of Justin’s writings By not knowing God we will do him no harm; we will only cut ourselves off from his friendship. A teacher’s incompetence ruins his students, and the students’ carelessness puts the teacher in danger — above all when their negligence is owed to his own ignorance.

The soul is recalled only with difficulty to the good things it has fallen from, and is dragged only with difficulty away from the evils it has grown used to. If you ever showed any willingness to blame yourself, then perhaps, through the medicine of repentance, I would hold out good hope for you. But when you despise fear altogether and throw away in contempt the very faith of Christ, it would have been better for you never to have been born. — From the writings of John of Damascus [g]

The two birds stand for Christ, dead as a man and alive as God. He is compared to a bird because he is understood and declared to be from above, from heaven. And the living bird, after being dipped in the blood of the dead one, was then let go: for the living and divine Word was in the crucified and dead temple of the body, sharing in the suffering, and yet, in respect of God, unable to suffer. What was done in the running water — in which the wood, the hyssop, and the scarlet were dipped — sets out the bloody suffering of Christ on the cross, for the salvation of those who are sprinkled with the Spirit, the water, and the blood. That is why the material for the purification was not provided mainly with leprosy in view, but with a view to the forgiveness of sins: so that leprosy might be understood as a picture of sin, and the things sacrificed as a picture of the one who was to be sacrificed for sins. For this reason, then, he ordered the scarlet to be dipped in the water at the same time, foretelling that the flesh would no longer keep the properties natural to it. For this reason too there were two birds: one sacrificed in the water, the other dipped both in the blood and in the water and then sent away — just as the account of the goats also runs. The goat that was sent away was a figure of the one who takes away the sins of men. But the two together made one picture of the single plan of God in the flesh. For he was wounded for our wrongdoing, and he bore the sins of many, and he was handed over for our lawless acts. — From a manuscript of Justin’s writings [h]

When God formed man at the beginning, he made the things of nature depend on man’s will, and he tested him by a single command. He laid it down that if the man kept it he would share in a life that does not die, but if he broke it the opposite would be his lot. Man, made this way, looked toward breaking the command at once, and so naturally became subject to decay. Decay was then built into his nature, and so whoever wanted to save him had to be one who destroyed what caused the decay. And there was no other way to do it than for the life that is according to nature to be joined to what had taken on the decay — destroying the decay, and keeping what had taken it on immortal from then on. It was necessary, then, for the Word to come to have a body, so that he might free us from the death of natural decay. For if, as you say, he had simply warded death off from us by a nod, death would indeed not have come near us, because he had willed it so; but we would have become perishable again all the same, since we were carrying that natural decay about inside us. — Leontius, Against the Eutychians, book 2 [l]

Just as it belongs to every body God has formed to cast a shadow, so it is fitting that God, who is just, should give to those who choose what is good and to those who prefer what is evil — to each according to what he deserves. — From the writings of John of Damascus He is not speaking of the Gentiles in foreign lands, but of the people who go along with the Gentiles, as Jeremiah says: “It is a bitter thing for you that you have left me, says the Lord your God — that long ago you broke your yoke and tore your bonds apart and said, ‘I will not serve you, but I will go to every high hill and under every tree, and there I will spill myself out in my sexual immorality.’” — From a manuscript of Justin’s writings [n] Light will never be darkness as long as light exists, and the truth of the things that concern us will never be overturned. For truth is the thing than which nothing is stronger. Anyone who could speak the truth and does not speak it will be judged by God. — From a manuscript and from the writings of John of Damascus

The fact that it was not said of the seventh day, as it was of the others, “And there was evening, and there was morning,” is a clear sign of the completion that is to take place in it before it is finished. So the fathers declare — Clement especially, and Irenaeus, and Justin the martyr and philosopher, who comments with great wisdom on the number six of the sixth day and states that man’s thinking soul and his five senses, which take in impressions, were the six works of the sixth day. Then, having discussed the number six at length, he declares that everything God has framed falls into six classes: things that think and do not die, such as the angels; things that reason and die, such as human beings; things that have sensation and no reason, such as cattle and birds and fish; things that can go forward and move and have no sensation, such as the winds, the clouds, the waters, and the stars; things that grow and do not move, such as trees; and things that have neither sensation nor movement, such as the mountains, the earth, and the like. For every creature of God in heaven and on earth falls under one or another of these divisions and is bounded by them. — From the writings of Anastasius [o]

Sound teaching does not get into a hard and disobedient heart; it is beaten back, as it were, and returns into itself. As health is the good of the body, so knowledge is the good of the soul — a kind of health of the soul, in fact, by which a likeness to God is reached. — From the writings of John of Damascus

To give in and give way to our passions is the lowest kind of slavery, just as to rule over them is the only freedom. The greatest of all goods is to be free from sin; the next is to be set right. But the most unfortunate man of all must be reckoned the one who lives unrighteously and stays a long time unpunished. A team in harness cannot help being carried over a cliff by a driver who is unskilled and bad, just as by a skillful and good one they will be brought through safely. The goal a philosopher aims at is likeness to God, as far as that is possible. — From the writings of Antonius Melissa [p]

Words of Justin, philosopher and martyr, from the fifth part of his Apology: I count well-being, gentlemen, as nothing other than living according to truth. But we do not live properly, or according to truth, unless we understand the nature of things. It escapes them, apparently, that the person who has come out of error into the truth by a true faith has truly come to know himself — not, as they say, in a fit of madness, but as one set free from the decay that is unstable and shifting in every direction of error, set free by the truth, which is simple and always the same. — From the writings of John of Damascus [r]